PHARMA TECH
Apollomics, Inc. | September 15, 2022
Apollomics Inc. a late-stage clinical biopharmaceutical company, and Maxpro Capital Acquisition Corp. announced a definitive agreement for a business combination that would result in Apollomics becoming a publicly traded company on the Nasdaq Global Market. The business combination is expected to close in the first quarter of 2023 and Apollomics is expected to be listed on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “APLM.”
Apollomics’ broad pipeline of drug candidates includes late-stage clinical assets for the treatment of patients with difficult-to-treat cancers. Apollomics’ mission is to develop assets in critically important areas of unmet need. The Company’s leading drug candidates address certain subpopulations within lung cancer and leukemia. Globally, both lung cancer and leukemia affect over 2 million people annually.
The Company is dedicated to discovering and developing oncology therapies of different mechanisms of action to inhibit cancer. Its diverse portfolio of innovative drug candidates for treating difficult-to-treat cancers includes precision therapy targeting tumors with specific mutations, as well as assets addressing broader cancer conditions. The Company’s pipeline of nine clinical, preclinical and discovery drug candidates has the potential to improve treatment of a number of tumor types.
Upon the closing of the transaction, Apollomics will continue to be led by current Chairman and CEO, Dr. Guo-Liang Yu, Ph.D., a serial entrepreneur, and his team. Dr. Yu is a pharmaceutical researcher with more than 300 patents.
“Apollomics’ announcement represents the next major milestone on our journey to provide solutions for patients with difficult-to-treat cancers,” Dr. Yu said. “We anticipate that the funds available to us from this transaction will help us accelerate development of our oncology pipeline.”
Apollomics expects results from its global Phase 2 multi-cohort clinical trial of vebreltinib in NSCLC and other solid tumors with cMET dysregulation in 2023, which the Company believes may support its first New Drug Application (“NDA”) with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) while generating clinical data for different indications. In addition, the Company expects to complete patient recruitment of its uproleselan Phase 3 study in China in 2023.
“Our goal was to find an exciting company with a growing pipeline of innovative product candidates that could positively affect the lives of millions of people. Our team is excited to combine with Apollomics as it has met and exceeded all our key selection criteria. Together with Apollomics, Maxpro will do everything we can to support the Company’s vision of treating patients with difficult-to-treat cancers.”
Moses Chen, CEO of Maxpro
About Apollomics Inc.
Apollomics Inc. is an innovative clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of oncology therapies with the potential to be combined with other treatment options to harness the immune system and target specific molecular pathways to inhibit cancer. Apollomics currently has a pipeline of nine drug candidates across multiple programs, six of which are currently in the clinical stage of development. Apollomics’ lead programs include investigating its core product, vebreltinib (APL-101), a potent, selective c-Met inhibitor for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer and other advanced tumors with c-Met alterations, which is currently in a Phase 2 multicohort clinical trial in the United States, and developing an anti-cancer enhancer drug candidate, uproleselan (APL-106), a specific E-Selectin antagonist that has the potential to be used adjunctively with standard chemotherapy to treat acute myeloid leukemia and other hematologic cancers, which is currently in Phase 1 and Phase 3 clinical trials in China.
About Maxpro Capital Acquisition Corp.
Maxpro is a blank check company formed for the purposes of effecting a merger, capital share exchange, asset acquisition, share purchase, reorganization, or similar business combination with one or more businesses in the healthcare and technology industries. In October 2021, Maxpro consummated a $103.5 million initial public offering of 10.35 million units (including the underwriters’ full exercise of their over-allotment option), each unit consists of one share of Class A common stock and one redeemable warrant, each warrant entitles the holder to purchase one share of Class A common stock at a price of $11.50 per share. EF Hutton, division of Benchmark Investments LLC, served as the sole book-running manager of Maxpro’s initial public offering.
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BUSINESS INSIGHTS
IntegriChain | November 18, 2022
IntegriChain, delivering pharma's only comprehensive technology, data, consulting, and outsourcing platform for data-driven commercialization, announced a strategic data partnership with PurpleLab, a healthcare technology company delivering analytics to drive real-world evidence decision-making. As a first step to this partnership, IntegriChain will incorporate PurpleLab prescription drug claims data to address challenges in visibility to demand and inventory that has resulted from evolving pharmaceutical channels for new specialty pharmaceutical products.
"As the Pharma industry has shifted to more fragmented non-retail therapies such as specialty lite and specialty self- and HCP-administered products, distribution channels are more diverse and complicated. These new channels have visibility gaps that create unreasonable risk of errors in gross-to-net forecasting and accrual management. PurpleLab data – covering more than 350 million patient lives, 4 billion annual claims, and 98% of payers – enhances our ability to deliver true demand and inventory visibility, more accurate gross-to-net forecasting and accruals, and most importantly data-driven commercialization for specialty products to Pharma commercial and financial teams."
Gary Palgon, IntegriChain's General Manager and Senior Vice President, Data Solutions
With this partnership, IntegriChain will seamlessly integrate PurpleLab pharmacy and medical claims data into the ICyte platform and the Inventory Analytics product, improving demand and inventory visibility to actual dispensing volumes at the site of dispense or administration. This data integration will deliver a more accurate depiction of demand attributed to individual outlets, ensuring a closer alignment between net sales and demand at a channel and more accurate pipeline inventory calculations. In addition, IntegriChain will deliver increased fidelity of national and subnational datasets for targeting by incorporating PurpleLab data into ICyte's unblinding process. The seamless addition of PurpleLab data into the ICyte Platform will be generally available in ICyte Inventory Analytics in January 2023. Additional future data enhancements will be announced in due course.
About ICyte Data Solutions
IntegriChain offers a full suite of channel data products, including:
Channel Data Aggregation: Aggregation of all channel and distribution datasets including ExFactory Sales, Distributor Inventories, Demand, and Returns to deliver the highest quality master data, including industry-leading data science and enrichment algorithms to deliver end-to-end views of product distribution.
Inventory Analytics: Manufacturers have few existing measures of the inventory held in retail stores, distribution centers, and third-party returns processors. IntegriChain Inventory Analytics reports 100% of inventory in the retail channel, even in pharmacy stores and distribution centers that do not report their inventories.
Distribution Contract Management: Distribution Contract Management is a single, auditable application for managing all aspects of trade partner agreements. Configurable trade partner scorecard functionality features payment adjudication, custom pay-for-performance metrics, payment roll forward, and top- and bottom-line functionality adjustments.
Channel Data Consulting Services: Based on IntegriChain pioneering the field of channel data aggregation, stewardship, and advanced analytics, the Channel Insights and Optimization practice delivers Market Demand Analysis, Class of Trade, Downstream Inventory Analytics, Returns Forecasting, and Revenue Analytics consulting services to Pharma manufacturers of all types and sizes.
About PurpleLab
PurpleLab is a healthtech company with a mission to spur value-driven innovation in healthcare to improve outcomes for patients. HealthNexus™, the company's no-code analytics platform empowers life sciences, payers, providers and other stakeholders with real-world evidence to solve conventional and emerging challenges faster and more cost effectively.
About IntegriChain
IntegriChain delivers pharma's only comprehensive technology, data, consulting, and outsourcing platform for market access departments. We provide the strategy and operational execution for data-driven product commercialization and market access. More than 400 manufacturers rely on our consulting expertise and ICyte Platform to orchestrate their prescription management, patient data management, inventory and demand visibility, enterprise GTN technology, and platform insights. ICyte is the first and only platform that unites the financial, operational, and commercial data sets required to support commercialization and access in the era of specialty and precision medicine.
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PHARMA TECH
Xeris | November 24, 2022
Xeris Biopharma Holdings, Inc. a growth-oriented biopharmaceutical company committed to improving patient lives by developing and commercializing innovative products across a range of therapies, announced that it has entered into a research collaboration and option agreement with Horizon Therapeutics plc. Under the terms of the agreement, Xeris will use its proprietary formulation technology platform, XeriJect™, to develop an ultra-concentrated, ready-to-use, subcutaneous injection of teprotumumab and Horizon will have an option to license the Xeris technology. Teprotumumab is the first and only medicine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of Thyroid Eye Disease a serious, progressive and potentially vision-threatening rare autoimmune disease. Teprotumumab-trbw is known as TEPEZZA® in the United States. Xeris will receive an upfront payment, and may be entitled to receive development milestones, regulatory milestones, and salesbased milestones, as well as royalties based on future sales if the commercial license option is exercised. Specific financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
“We are excited to announce our collaboration with Horizon for the development of a subcutaneous formulation of teprotumumab using our XeriJect technology to potentially enhance the patient experience and delivery of the treatment for Thyroid Eye Disease. This partnership demonstrates the potential value of our technology to enable large molecule subcutaneous injections that provide a more patient friendly regimen that is effective, safe, and more convenient, with potential for improved adherence.”
Paul R. Edick, Chairman and CEO of Xeris
About XeriJect™
XeriJect formulations are innovative, ready-to-use, viscoelastic pharmaceutical suspensions that have the potential to improve drug delivery, lower treatment burden and improve patients' lives across a broad range of therapeutic categories. XeriJect suspensions maximize drug loadings at >400mg/mL, enable small volume subcutaneous injections and do not settle on storage. The suspensions use FDA-approved excipients and leverage known manufacturing processes. XeriJect formulation technology is well suited for drugs and biologics including large molecules such as proteins, monoclonal antibodies, and vaccines. The technology is protected by an extensive patent estate, trade secrets and know-how, and it is available for licensing.
About Xeris
Xeris is a growth-oriented biopharmaceutical company committed to improving patients’ lives by developing and commercializing innovative products across a range of therapies. Xeris has three commercially available products; Gvoke®, a ready-to-use liquid glucagon for the treatment of severe hypoglycemia, Keveyis®, the first and only FDA-approved therapy for primary periodic paralysis, and Recorlev® for the treatment of endogenous Cushing’s syndrome. Xeris also has a robust pipeline of development programs to extend the current marketed products into important new indications and uses and bring new products forward using its proprietary formulation technology platforms, XeriSol™ and XeriJect™, supporting long-term product development and commercial success.
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