A low pro­file, Chi­nese biotech has been work­ing on de­vel­op­ing drugs for di­a­betes and meta­bol­ic dis­or­ders. Now, the com­pa­ny, known as Inno­gen Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Tech­nol­o­gy, has nabbed $120 mil­lion in ven­ture cap­i­tal.

Deal Street Asia re­port­ed on the fi­nanc­ing this morn­ing, list­ing the lead in­vestors as Youshan Cap­i­tal and Chi­na Growth Cap­i­tal. Oth­er in­vestors in­clude CI­CC Qide Fund, V Star Cap­i­tal and Chi­na Ever­bright Lim­it­ed.

This is not Inno­gen’s on­ly fi­nanc­ing this year. Inno­gen had closed a round back in April with in­vestors Ko­rea In­vest­ment Part­ners and Cowin Cap­i­tal, ac­cord­ing to Deal Street Asia.

The com­pa­ny, found­ed in 2015, said that the funds will push the com­pa­ny’s pipeline for­ward, with a fo­cus on di­a­betes and oth­er meta­bol­ic dis­or­ders. And as part of that plan for the pipeline, Inno­gen will push for­ward on get­ting its di­a­betes drug Su­paglu­tide in­to Phase III clin­i­cal test­ing.

Su­paglu­tide is a GLP-1 ag­o­nist, the same mech­a­nism of ac­tion as Eli Lil­ly’s and Sanofi’s block­buster di­a­betes drugs Trulic­i­ty and Ozem­pic, among oth­er com­peti­tors.

Chi­na has the high­est pop­u­la­tion in the world with di­a­betes, ac­cord­ing to the WHO and oth­er re­searchers — with up­wards of 110 mil­lion peo­ple, or 1 in 10 peo­ple in the coun­try hav­ing di­a­betes.

Be­yond ad­vanc­ing the pipeline for­ward, the biotech said it would move for­ward with build­ing a drug pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty that is up to par for clin­i­cal tri­als. On any oth­er de­tails, they re­mained mum.

At the 2021 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, blood cancer researchers from around the world gathered virtually to discuss the progress that has been made in the field of hematology. Over the past decade, that progress has been tremendous. We’ve seen not only breakthrough approaches to care, but also significant improvement upon existing novel treatments and exploring combinations within those medicines.1 These advances have transformed expectations of what a blood cancer diagnosis now means for patients. While we’ve come a long way, I believe the most exciting scientific discovery is yet to come, and that future advances will truly transform patient care.

The FDA on Thursday authorized another new pill to treat the Omicron variant, this time from Merck.

While Pfizer’s antiviral may prove to be more effective, and Merck’s pill has left some scientists questioning the dangers behind its mechanism of action, molnupiravir will be another weapon in the armamentarium of Covid-19 treatments for the US in a time of need, as two mAb treatments from Regeneron and Eli Lilly are no longer effective against Omicron, and as supplies of a third mAb from Vir/GlaxoSmithKline are very limited.

It’s time for our holiday break here at Endpoints News, and like a lot of you, we’ve been prepping for 2022.

Anyone who’s spent some time in industry can tell you the past decade has shoved the drug-hunting field into the forefront of the world’s view of things, garnering tens of billions in investment as new technologies look to change the landscape of R&D. And anyone who qualifies for first-in-class and best-in-class can clean up.

Unlock this story instantly and join 126,500+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

Christmas is coming early for Gyroscope.

In its latest gene therapy gambit, Novartis is paying $800 million upfront to acquire the Syncona-backed biotech, with another $700 million reserved for milestones.

Novartis has been diving deep into retinal disorders, and Gyroscope’s lead candidate adds a potential one-time treatment for geographic atrophy — a leading cause of blindness — to the pipeline.

Unlock this story instantly and join 126,500+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

Alzheimer’s disease researchers along with medical professors from Harvard and Johns Hopkins issued a formal statement Monday asking the FDA to quickly pull Biogen’s Aduhelm from the market.

“An accelerated withdrawal would mitigate some of the harm of its unwarranted accelerated approval,” they wrote to FDA, explaining how Aduhelm “did not meet the FDA’s own criteria for accelerated approval based on surrogate markers because amyloid plaque does not correlate well with symptoms, severity of disease or progression.”

Unlock this story instantly and join 126,500+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

On the heels of a big FDA approval last week for its keystone asthma drug, Amgen is adding on at its Irish manufacturing site.

Amgen’s site in Dún Laoghaire is about to get a $100 million upgrade to improve its formulation, aseptic drug product filling, lyophilisation and packaging operations as the company celebrates its 10th year in Ireland. The addition will add another 150 jobs for construction workers in the Dublin suburb. The project is set to be the company’s largest outside of North America.

Unlock this story instantly and join 126,500+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

The centerpiece of Novartis’s $9.7 billion buyout of the Medicines Company can finally go to market.

Branded Leqvio, the small interfering RNA therapy long known as inclisiran is the first and only FDA-approved treatment to reduce LDL-C, i.e. bad cholesterol, with just two maintenance doses a year after an initial dose and another one at three months.

Touting a “revolutionary approach,” Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan noted that the approval “creates new possibilities for how healthcare systems can impact cardiovascular disease, a defining public health challenge of our time.” The label covers both atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia.

Unlock this story instantly and join 126,500+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

Sanofi is crashing the year-end M&A party with a deal of its own.

Immuno-oncology is the name of the game as it swallows Mountain View, CA-based Amunix for $1 billion upfront and up to $225 million in biobucks, tagging a suite of T cell engagers and cytokine therapies as well as a tech platform for making “conditionally activated biologics.”

“The Amunix technology platform utilizes a next generation smart biologics approach to precisely tailor-deliver medicines to become active only in tumor tissues while sparing normal tissues,” said Sanofi R&D chief John Reed, “thus bringing the promise of more effective and safer treatment options for cancer patients.”

Unlock this story instantly and join 126,500+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

Drug pricing reform has been a political football for years, with both Donald Trump and Joe Biden championing changes during their presidencies. Little has moved the needle on Capitol Hill, however, thanks in part to the drug industry’s powerful lobbyists.

In the most recent example, Democrats tried to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices — an immediate non-starter for biopharma proponents. After months of negotiation, the measure fell apart in favor of provisions on a small subset of drugs that passed the House but marked a far cry from Biden’s promises and what many activists had hoped for. The bill, included as part of Biden’s broad social policy agenda, now appears dead after Democrats failed to secure 50 votes in the Senate.

Unlock this story instantly and join 126,500+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

Bioscience & Technology Business Center The University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas

If you're already an Endpoints subscriber, enter your email below for a magic link that lets you log in quickly without using a password. Please note the magic link is one-time use only and expires after 24 hours.

We'll e-mail you a link to set a new password. Please note this link is one-time use only and is valid for only 24 hours.

ENDPOINTS NEWS by John Carroll & team — all the news at 11:30am ET

EARLY EDITION by Arsalan Arif — news and links at 7:15am ET

ENDPOINTS MANUFACTURING Weekly biopharma manufacturing report, Thursdays at 2pm ET

ENDPOINTS WEEKLY Recaps the most important developments on Saturday 6am ET

ENDPOINTS FDA+ Regulatory news and analysis for drug developers, Wednesday 2pm ET

ENDPOINTS MARKETING RX Covers advertising and the multibillion-dollar drug commercialization world, Tuesday 2pm ET