On January 7, 2021 Apexigen, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, reported that Xiaodong Yang, M.D., Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer, will participate in two upcoming virtual investor healthcare conferences (Press release, Apexigen, JAN 7, 2021, View Source [SID1234573662]):

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The Solebury Trout Virtual Management Access Event being held January 6 – 15, 2021. The Company will be conducting one-on-one meetings.
H.C. Wainwright Virtual BioConnect 2021 Conference. The Company’s presentation will be available on-demand from January 11 – 14, 2021.

On January 7, 2021 Rakuten Medical, Inc. (RMI), a global biotechnology company developing precision-targeted cancer therapies based on its proprietary, anti-cancer treatment platform, Illuminox, reported that it will present at the 39th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference being held virtually January 11-14, 2021 (Press release, Rakuten Medical, JAN 7, 2021, View Source [SID1234573661]).

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Rakuten Medical’s Chairman and CEO, Hiroshi "Mickey" Mikitani, is scheduled to present virtually at approximately 4:30 a.m. PST, Monday, January 11. A live audio webcast of the presentation can be accessed by following this link. Following the completion of the presentation, a full audio recording will be available in the News section of the Rakuten Medical, Inc website at www.rakuten-med.com and will be archived in this location for 30 days.

On January 7, 2021 Gracell Biotechnologies Inc. (NASDAQ:GRCL) ("Gracell"), a global clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to discovering and developing breakthrough cell therapies to address major industry challenges and fulfill unmet medical needs in the treatment of cancer, reported the pricing of its initial public offering of 11,000,000 American Depositary Shares ("ADSs"), each representing five ordinary shares, at a public offering price of US$19.00 per ADS (Press release, Gracell Biotechnologies, JAN 7, 2021, View Source [SID1234573660]). The gross proceeds to Gracell from the offering are expected to be US$209.0 million, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and other offering expenses. In addition, Gracell has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,650,000 ADSs at the initial public offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions. All of the ordinary shares represented by ADSs are being offered by Gracell.

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The ADSs have been approved for listing on The Nasdaq Global Market and are expected to begin trading on January 8, 2021 under the ticker symbol "GRCL". The offering is expected to close on January 12, 2021 subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

Citigroup, Jefferies, Piper Sandler & Co. and Wells Fargo Securities are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering.

The offering of the securities is made only by means of a prospectus forming a part of the effective registration statement. A copy of the prospectus relating to the offering may be obtained by contacting: Citigroup Global Markets Inc., c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, by telephone at (800) 831-9146 or by email at [email protected]; Jefferies LLC, Attention: Equity Syndicate Prospectus Department, 520 Madison Avenue, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10022, by telephone at (877) 821-7388 or by email at [email protected]; Piper Sandler & Co., Attention: Prospectus Department, 800 Nicollet Mall, J12S03, Minneapolis, MN 55402, by telephone at (800) 747-3924 or by email at [email protected]; or Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Attention: Equity Syndicate Department, 500 West 33rd Street, New York, NY 10001, by telephone at (800) 326-5897 or by email at [email protected].

Gracell’s registration statement relating to the offering has been filed with, and declared effective by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy the securities described herein, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

On January 7, 2021 ArsenalBio, a privately held programmable cell therapy company, reported the formation of a multi-year discovery collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) to advance next-generation T cell therapies for the treatment of solid tumors (Press release, Arsenal Bio, JAN 7, 2021, View Source [SID1234573659]). ArsenalBio will be responsible for discovering and building preclinical candidates against multiple targets, and Bristol Myers Squibb will have the option to obtain an exclusive worldwide license to develop and commercialize preclinical candidates. Following exercise of the option, Bristol Myers Squibb would be solely responsible for developing and commercializing the licensed candidates.

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Through the multi-year collaboration, ArsenalBio will deploy its full stack of synthetic biology compositions to build programmable cell therapy product candidates, composed of its PrimeR logic gates, CARchitecture derived gene expression controls, and CellFoundry mediated nonviral manufacturing. Combined, these integrated circuit-modified T cells offer the promise of improved outcomes for patients.

"Despite the therapeutic benefit of cell therapies for hematologic cancers, cell therapies for solid tumors remain an area of significant opportunity and unmet medical need," said Ken Drazan, MD, ArsenalBio’s co-founder and chief executive officer. "We are thrilled to team up with Bristol Myers Squibb to advance next-generation T cell therapies designed to serve patients and their providers. Their expertise and leadership in cell therapy and oncology drug development will help accelerate the pace with which we can move product candidates into and through clinical development and broaden our opportunity to help more patients and save more lives."

Under the terms of the agreement, Bristol Myers Squibb will make an upfront cash payment to ArsenalBio of $70 million, and ArsenalBio will be eligible to receive additional payments associated with collaboration expansion, regulatory and sales milestones, as well as potential royalties on sales of approved products. Bristol Myers Squibb will also make an investment in ArsenalBio for an undisclosed amount.

On January 7, 2021 Crown Bioscience, a JSR Life Sciences company, reported the expansion of their state-of-the-art NGS capabilities, together with the launch of proprietary NGS panel services, providing increased opportunities for pharmaceutical partners to better understand drug mechanisms of action (MOA) and to develop predictive biomarkers for their investigational drug candidates (Press release, Crown Bioscience, JAN 7, 2021, View Source [SID1234573658]).

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The newly built, comprehensive suite of NGS capabilities provides clients with a streamlined multi-omics workflow of high-quality services, enabling full genomic understanding, including global gene expression, mutations, and genomic structures. This is a significant addition to CrownBio’s current preclinical and translational services, allowing clients greater insight into disease mechanisms, drug MOAs, and responder patient populations, to ultimately accelerate successful development of effective therapies.

The expanded services have been established at the Company’s Center of Translational Science in Suzhou, China, to meet increased client demand for whole genome sequencing (WGS), including Illumina’s Novaseq 6000 and BGI’s MGISEQ-2000 second generation sequencing platform. PacBio’s third generation Sequel Ⅱ sequencing platform allows for high throughput, high accuracy long-read NGS, and Bionano’s Saphyr Genome Imaging enables large structural variant analysis and genome mapping. Comprehensive data analysis pipelines have also been built, together offering highly sensitive genome assembly and discovery algorithms.

"With our range of validated services, we can help drug developers improve the accuracy, sensitivity and speed at which they progress their new agent programs via discovery of MOAs and predictive biomarkers," said Henry Li, PhD, chief scientific officer at CrownBio. "This type of multi-omics data is essential to understand the clinical populations that respond to anticancer agents and progress cancer treatments."

In addition to the validated commercial platforms, CrownBio has also developed various powerful biomedical applications using NGS platforms, including NGS panels for bio-sample authentication, contamination detection and quantification, mouse tumor microenvironment profiling and metagenomic sequencing services for microbiome analysis. Custom NGS services are also available for clients who wish to utilize CrownBio’s expertise and large model biobank.

"Quality downstream applications are key to maximizing the full potential of in vivo study results, including our wealth of historical model and treatment data," said Sheng Guo, PhD, head of bioinformatics at CrownBio. "These are leveraged by a highly experienced team and a proprietary, published algorithm to provide important biomarker discovery and drug mechanism probing services."

These NGS services are available for client use immediately including our newly launched mouse I/O profiling targeted RNA-seq panel. The panel will allow deep profiling of the immunogenomics of murine tumor-immune interactions through the measurement of 1080 transcripts from a single sample.