Dianthus Therapeutics and Boehringer Ingelheim headlined the latest round of licensing deals featuring Chinese biotechs. Fierce's deep dive into the dispute between Novo Nordisk and KBP Biosciences wrapped up with Chapter 3. Takeda inked its second pact with Nabla Bio. And more.
1. Dianthus offers up to $1B for China biotech's autoimmune 'pipeline in a product'
New York City-based Dianthus Therapeutics has scoped out a first-in-class asset with best-in-class potential in Nanjing Leads Biolabs’ LBL-047. In a deal worth up to $1 billion, Dianthus has picked up ex-China rights to the drug candidate, which is now dubbed DNTH212. The drug, a bifunctional BDCA2 and BAFF/APRIL inhibitor, is designed to block two clinically validated pathways that are known drivers of several autoimmune diseases, according to Dianthus.
Fierce’s deep dive into the dispute between pharma giant Novo Nordisk and Singapore biotech upstart KBP Biosciences concluded with Chapter 3, which examined the arguments around due diligence that went into the ill-fated drug acquisition. While Novo maintains that KBP failed to disclose certain material information about its hypertension drug hopeful ocedurenone, KBP hit back by saying Novo failed to properly look into the acquisition and that the biotech didn’t have a duty to share more information. Fierce’s Angus Liu interviewed several experts who are not parties to the dispute to gain third-party perspectives.
It wasn’t only Dianthus tapping innovation out of Asia this week. In a deal worth up to $991 million, Boehringer Ingelheim is getting in on an antibody-drug conjugate from South Korea’s AimedBio. The candidate is expected to enter first-in-human testing next year. The preclinical ADC weds a cancer-targeting monoclonal antibody with a derivative of exatecan as the cytotoxic payload. For Boehringer, the deal follows a pair of other plays in the ADC space this year.
Artificial intelligence drug design and discovery deals are continuing apace in the industry, with Japanese pharma giant Takeda this week inking its second pact with Nabla Bio. A spinout from the lab of George Church, Ph.D., Nabla is in line to receive “double-digit millions in upfront and research cost payments,” according to a press release. Nabla attracted the attention of several pharma giants last year when it unveiled its first Takeda collab alongside deals with AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers Squibb.
After last year's Biosecure Act prompted serious industry concerns, the U.S. Senate has passed a new version of the legislation as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. The legislation broadly seeks to prevent any Chinese biopharma "company of concern" from receiving U.S. federal funding, either directly or through intermediary companies. Notably, the new version doesn’t name two key biopharma industry partners in WuXi Biologics and WuXi AppTec. The U.S. House of Representatives would need to pass its own version of the legislation before it could go before President Donald Trump for a potential signature.