On August 24, 2020 Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (TSE:4502/NYSE:TAK) ("Takeda") reported that it has entered into an agreement to divest Takeda Consumer Healthcare Company Limited ("TCHC"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Takeda focused on the consumer health care market primarily in Japan, to Oscar A-Co KK, a company controlled by funds managed by The Blackstone Group Inc. and its affiliates (collectively "Blackstone") for a total value of JPY 242.0 billion* (Press release, Takeda, AUG 24, 2020, View Source [SID1234564033]). Blackstone is one of the world leading investment firms and has extensive investment experience in the health care sector. The transaction is expected to close by March 31, 2021, subject to customary legal and regulatory closing conditions.

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The portfolio to be divested to Blackstone includes a variety of over-the-counter ("OTC") medicines and health products that generated total revenues of over JPY 60 billion in fiscal year 2019. TCHC’s strong regional brands include Alinamin, its top selling product and Japan’s first vitamin B1 preparation, and Benza, a cold remedy. Blackstone intends to develop the business together with current TCHC management and continue to employ its employees.

Christophe Weber, Takeda President and Chief Executive Officer said, "Today’s transaction will provide TCHC with the ownership, resources and strategic focus to continue to thrive and meet the needs of customers, while further sharpening Takeda’s strategic focus and commitment to financial discipline and transforming science into life-changing medicines. TCHC played an important role in Takeda’s long history, but with our growth strategy now focused on five key business areas – Gastroenterology (GI), Rare Diseases, Plasma-Derived Therapies, Oncology and Neuroscience – and an increasingly competitive consumer health care market in Japan, the ownership transition will benefit both TCHC and Takeda. We are confident that under Blackstone, TCHC will be well-positioned to continue growing and developing its product offerings in the years to come to address the evolving needs of consumers."

Takeda, which started TCHC as a separate business in April 2017 to further develop the consumer health care business in Japan, is now focused on highly innovative medicines across its five key business areas and working to address significant unmet patient needs in these fields. Under Blackstone’s ownership, TCHC will benefit from increased strategic focus, resources and agility to support the growth and development of its important brands and to rapidly respond to evolving market conditions and diverse customer needs.

The sale of TCHC supports Takeda’s divestiture program which is focused on optimization of its portfolio to align with its global long-term growth strategy and provide uninterrupted access and supply of critical products to patients. So far in 2020, Takeda has also agreed to divest three different non-core asset portfolios in the Asia Pacific, Europe, and Latin America regions. In June, Takeda agreed to divest a portfolio of non-core assets sold exclusively in the Asia Pacific region to Celltrion for up to $278 million USD; in April, Takeda announced the sale of non-core products in Europe to Orifarm Group for up to approximately $670 million USD, including the sale of two manufacturing sites in Denmark and Poland; and in March, Takeda announced the sale of non-core products in Latin America to Hypera Pharma for $825 million USD, as well as completed the previously announced sales of non-core assets spanning the Russia-CIS region to STADA and in countries spanning the Near East, Middle East and Africa region to Acino.

On August 24, 2020 PEEL Therapeutics reported that Researchers have modified a derivative of a plant toxin and linked it to a nanocarrier to create a powerful new therapeutic for childhood tumors (Press release, PEEL Therapeutics, AUG 24, 2020, View Source [SID1234564025]). The new drug and its ability to eliminate chemoresistant tumors in mice is described in a new study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) (Free AACR Whitepaper). An exclusive license to develop the drug has been obtained by PEEL Therapeutics, Inc.

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Scientists from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have been testing the new cancer drug for several years in the laboratory to understand its potential to treat the most aggressive of childhood tumors. The drug is a derivative of camptothecin, a toxin isolated from the bark and stem of Camptotheca acuminata (Camptotheca, Happy tree) used for thousands of years for cancer treatment in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Camptothecin poisons cancer cells and has been chemically modified to make chemotherapies like irinotecan and topotecan, drugs used today to treat childhood solid tumors, pancreatic and colorectal cancer. CHOP researchers worked with a pharmacologically enhanced camptothecin derivative called SN22. Their newly engineered drug is made from multiple SN22 molecules reversibly linked to a biocompatible carrier fully eliminated by the body after delivering its payload. In preclinical studies, this new drug accumulates in tumors 50 to 100 times more than irinotecan without causing toxicity or eliciting chemoresistance.

PEEL Therapeutics, a USA-Israeli biotech company, has licensed the new drug from CHOP to prepare an Investigational New Drug submission to the FDA. As highlighted in the paper, the engineered SN22 produced remarkably long-term remission in 80 to 100% of mice with drug-resistant tumors including neuroblastoma, Ewing sarcoma, and rhabdomyosarcoma. Many tumors completely disappeared after 4 doses and remained undetectable for over 6 months without ever returning. The CHOP study published in Cancer Research demonstrated that the drug is protected from enzymes that inactivate camptothecins and unaffected by cell transporters that pump out chemotherapies from cancer cells. Importantly for children, the paper describes that the engineered drug appears to have a better safety profile with less toxicities than irinotecan.

PEEL Therapeutics CEO and Co-Founder, Dr. Joshua Schiffman, is a pediatric oncologist and expressed excitement for PEEL’s involvement with this new drug. "At PEEL, we look for therapies inspired by evolution. The SN22 nanoparticle is the perfect example of a drug at the intersection of nature and technology. The increased delivery and decreased toxicities of this drug may offer very important advantages to patients with solid tumors, including children and adults."

PEEL Therapeutics, Inc. is an emerging biotech that delivers evolution-inspired medicines to improve patient lives. The PEEL pipeline originates from assets inspired by the evolution of elephants, plants and humans for the treatment of cancer and inflammatory diseases, including COVID-19. PEEL is supported by private investors and philanthropic charities including Closer To Cure Foundation, Animal Cancer Foundation, and Soccer for Hope Foundation. The company is located in Salt Lake City, Utah and Haifa, Israel.

On August 24, 2020 Sihuan Pharma reported its innovative drug subsidiary, Xuanzhu Biopharma, completed a $116 million Series A round financing from SDIC (Press release, XuanZhu Pharma, AUG 24, 2020, View Source [SID1234564024]). SDIC will own 18.6% of Xuanzhu, which is valued at $624 million. Sihuan said Xuanzhu is differentiated from other startups by having complete drug R&D capability along with the parent company’s production and commercialization support. The company has two candidates in late-stage trials: birociclib, a CDK4/6 inhibitor for advanced breast cancer and janagliflozin, an SGLT2 inhibitor for diabetes.

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On August 24, 2020 Merck reported that it is set to spend £1 billion ($1.31 billion) on a new unifying early research hub in England’s capital city (Press release, Merck & Co, AUG 24, 2020, View Source [SID1234563991]).

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The new hub, which will bring together staffers from across the region to a central hub in London, will be the company’s first early-stage R&D center outside of its native U.S. The focus will be on diseases of aging, predominately in neuroscience, an area with high risk but major unmet need.

Merck had made moves to create the hub back in 2017, a year after the U.K. voted to leave the EU, and was hailed by politicians as a positive investment.

It has been somewhat delayed, given how tight space is in London (the same issues New York has with lab space) and it wanting to be in the life sciences hub by the Francis Crick biomedical research institute in north London. Merck, known as MSD in Europe, already has a major five-year neuro R&D pact with the Crick Institute.

It will be called, quite simply, the London Discovery Research Centre, and it should be up and running by 2025, with work starting late next year, should it cut through the red tape. On top of the moving scientists and staffers from its other areas into the center, it also expects to create about 120 new jobs for scientists and technicians.

In all, it expects to employ 800 people at the 25,000-square-meter site and to spend £1 billion all told on the hub.

"We currently view the U.K. as a world leader in developing science, driven by the long-term emphasis on building a strong research and development infrastructure," said David Peacock, MSD managing director for the U.K. and Ireland, speaking to the Financial Times.

On August 24, 2020 Compass Therapeutics, Inc. a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing proprietary antibody therapeutics intended to engage the immune system to treat both solid tumors and hematological malignancies, reported the publication in the journal Science of preclinical data supporting CTX-2026, the Company’s novel anti-CD277 antibody product candidate (Press release, Compass Therapeutics, AUG 24, 2020, View Source [SID1234563985]). The paper describes the discovery and preclinical characterization of CTX-2026, a fully human antibody that binds to the CD277 antigen expressed on members of the butyrophilin family, including BTN3A1, and has been shown to engage two T cell subsets, gamma delta and alpha beta, to overcome the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment associated with ovarian cancer.

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The paper entitled "BTN3A1 Governs Antitumor Responses by Coordinating Alpha Beta and Gamma Delta T-Cells," was co-authored by Jose R. Conejo-Garcia, M.D., Ph.D., and other researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center, researchers from The Wistar Institute, and Compass Therapeutics scientists.

"Ovarian cancer has been one of the most difficult cancers to treat, with a significant unmet need in the United States and around the world. I am encouraged by these data which not only suggest that BTN3A1 may play an important role in ovarian cancer but also demonstrate that CTX-2026 binding to BTN3A1 overcame the immunosuppressive microenvironment of ovarian cancer and delayed malignant progression in preclinical tumor models," said Thomas Schuetz, M.D., Ph.D., co-founder and chief executive officer at Compass Therapeutics. "We are excited about this program and its potential to deliver a novel, immune-oncology therapeutic candidate."

"This research demonstrates that targeting BTN3A1 orchestrates cooperative killing of established tumors by alpha beta and gamma delta T cells, and could enable novel interventions for malignancies resistant to existing immunotherapies," said Dr. Conejo-Garcia, Co-Leader of the Immunology Program and Chair of the Department of Immunology, Moffitt Cancer Center.

Highlights from the publication include:

BTN3A1 is overexpressed in malignant ovarian cancers, compared to benign ovarian tumors and normal tissues. Consistent with its immunosuppressive role, higher average BTN3A1 expression in samples from 200 ovarian cancer patients with clinical data was associated with significant reduction in patient survival.
CTX-2026, an anti-CD277 antibody, elicited coordinated alpha beta and gamma delta T cell responses, preventing alpha beta T cell inhibition while inducing gamma delta T cell activation to suppress the growth of established ovarian tumors in preclinical models.
CTX-2026 antibodies transform BTN3A1 from an immunosuppressive to an immunostimulatory mediator, restoring pre-existing anti-tumor immune responses in immunocompetent syngeneic mouse models.
Targeting CD277 by CTX-2026 was associated with greater activity than a PD-1 blocker in the orthotopic xenograft and syngeneic models of ovarian cancer.