Curon Medical, Inc.

Dive Brief:Merck & Co. has made its first big move in obesity treatment, announcing Wednesday it is paying Hansoh Pharma $112 million for rights outside China to a preclinical pill that works similarly to the popular injection Wegovy.Per deal terms, China-based Hansoh could receive up to $1.9 billion in additional payouts based on reaching clinical, regulatory and commercial milestones. Hansoh has an option to co-promote or solely commercialize the pill, code-named HS-10535, in China.Merck was one of the few big U.S. drugmakers that didnt have an experimental obesity drug in development, and investors were therefore closely watching whether it would make a deal. Choosing a relatively inexpensive licensing deal with Hansoh disappointed investors in Viking Therapeutics, Terns Pharmaceuticals and Structure Therapeutics, which have been seen as acquisition targets. Shares in all three fell Wednesday.Dive Insight:Although Merck is an active developer of cardiovascular drugs, it hasnt advanced a novel metabolic medicine since its diabetes pill Januvia, which was approved in 2006. Januvia, and the metformin combination drug it calls Janumet, is still a blockbuster product, but sales have declined because of pricing pressure in the U.S. and generic competition overseas.With billions of dollars in revenue coming in from its cancer drug Keytruda, Merck has a big dealmaking war chest. Its choice to license an oral GLP-1 still in preclinical testing suggests Merck sees potential to enter the obesity market even though it trails Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, Pfizer and Roche.A licensing deal with Hansoh is relatively inexpensive, compared to a potential acquisition of U.S.-based biotechs like Viking and Structure that have multibillion-dollar market valuations. Merck has made two similarly small development deals with China-based biotechs in recent months: an oncology deal with LaNova Medicinesand an immunology pact with Curon Pharmaceutical.Analysts that cover Viking are still holding hope Merck could make more moves in obesity. We do not believe the licensing agreement with Hansoh will preclude Merck from expanding its presence in obesity through further external business development activities, William Blair analyst Andy Hsieh wrote in a Wednesday note to clients.Merck said it will record a $112 million pre-tax charge, or 4 cents a share, in its fourth quarter 2024 results because of the deal.Like Wegovy and other treatments in development, HS-10535 is a GLP-1 agonist, meaning it stimulates the hormones associated receptor. Hansoh has advanced an injectable drug that targets GLP-1 and another hormone called GIP into Phase 2 testing. '

AbbVie, already a leader in the T cell engager field with Epkinly and a Phase 3 program, is further digging into the field with a new discovery collaboration with EvolveImmune Therapeutics. The Chicago pharmaceutical company will pay EvolveImmune $65 million in upfront payments and equity, and it could dish out up to $1.4 billion in biobucks and fees if it elects to license the programs. The tie-up will focus on solid tumors and hematologic malignancies. The partnership is further validation of the R&D at EvolveImmune, which has raised about $72 million to date from VC investors as well as Bristol Myers Squibb and the corporate venture arms of Pfizer and Takeda. “There’s a next generation of T cell engagers, which we’re part of, that can bend the curve on treating patients,” EvolveImmune CEO Stephen Bloch told Endpoints News . He said the industry is “just at the beginning of that wave.” The deal arrives amid a week stacked with TCE-related deals and partnerships. GSK announced it’s paying $300 million upfront to buy an oncology T cell engager from Chimagen that it plans to study in lupus next year, and Genmab lined up a partnership with Revitope Oncology in solid tumors. Earlier this year, Merck paid $700 million for a Curon asset , Candid Therapeutics raised $370 million and Clasp Therapeutics nabbed $150 million. AbbVie is no stranger to T cell engagers. With Genmab, it markets the lymphoma treatment Epkinly. And in June, it also entered Phase 3 with another TCE, named ABBV-383. The money from AbbVie will help EvolveImmune get its lead internal program, named EVOLVE-104, into the clinic by the middle of next year, according to Bloch. The company likely won’t raise another private funding round before that Phase 1 but is open to additional financing in the future, he said. EvolveImmune has built a co-stimulatory molecule into its programs, which activates CD2, to improve durability. Bloch said T cell engagement through CD3 alone is “not enough” and leads to exhaustion and dysfunction of the T cells. “It’s a system, rather than folks who are thinking about multiple therapies or exogenous or multiple antibodies, to try to get to the same place,” Bloch said. Putting T cell engagers in studies for patients with autoimmune diseases has also become a focus in recent deals. Bloch said the company has a CD20 program that could be applied in autoimmune indications but will likely wait to see how other autoimmune TCEs read out in 2025. He’s not ruling out partnerships on the autoimmune front, though. “There’s a lot of competition,” he said, “and there’s also a lot of watching and seeing.” The startup, which has nearly 40 employees, previously did CRISPR/Cas9 discovery work in the CAR-T space. “The CAR-Ts obviously are incredibly important, but the T cell engagers open up cancer therapies to a much broader set of patients who may not be at academic medical centers,” Bloch said. He also pointed to the “very, very high” costs of administering CAR-Ts to patients.

As early data show how T cell engagers — originally developed for cancers — can potentially treat a range of autoimmune diseases, GSK is buying its own molecule from Chimagen Biosciences. The UK pharma is paying $300 million upfront to acquire global rights to Chimagen’s antibody CMG1A46 in a deal that comes with another $550 million in milestones. GSK said it plans to test the T cell engager in autoimmune diseases like lupus erythematosus and lupus nephritis. The deal comes after Merck paid $700 million to Curon in August for a CD3xCD19 bispecific antibody that could treat B cell cancers and autoimmune diseases. Lupus is a disease area that GSK is familiar with, having developed and commercialized the lupus treatment Benlysta. Chimagen is already testing CMG1A46 in early-stage clinical trials in the US and China for leukemia and lymphoma, and GSK said it plans to begin a Phase 1 study in lupus in 2025. The company was founded in 2016 by Zhenhao Zhou and Jie Zhang to develop multi-specific antibodies, and is based in Shanghai. CMG1A46 was the biotech’s only compound in clinical studies, but it has other preclinical candidates in its pipeline. The experimental treatment is a trispecific antibody that binds to the proteins CD19 and CD20 on B cells, as well as CD3 on T cells. The idea is that the T cells can go after the uncontrolled B cells that play a big role in the disease. Drug developers are looking at both T cell engagers and cell therapies as potential treatment options for various autoimmune diseases. In cancer, however, safety concerns have followed the drug class. GSK said that the antibody has a “low affinity for CD3, which could lower toxicities typically associated with TCEs.”