boost the capabilities of its synthetic biology product manufacturing facility, with increased supplies of raw synthetic DNA from Twist Bioscience of San Francisco and Gen9 of Cambridge. Vedanta Biosciences, of Cambridge, got $50 million to develop a broad pipeline of microbiome drugs. Ann Arbor, MI-based Strata Oncology launched with a $12 million round and plans to enter the increasingly competitive tumor profiling market. And tiny Philadelphia-based startup Freenome joined Guardant and Illumina (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ILMN]]) spinout Grail in the quest to provide blood-based cancer screening for seemingly healthy people, backed with a $5.5 million seed round from venture firm Andreessen Horowitz and others.
—On the IPO trail, meanwhile, Cambridge-based Syros Pharmaceuticals became the latest biotech to file for a public offering, and nearby Watertown, MA-based Selecta Biosciences inched closer to one, setting terms for an IPO that could price in two weeks. On the West Coast, Patrick Soon-Shiong’s NantHealth (NASDAQ: [[ticker:NH]]) sold 6.5 million shares at $14 apiece, raising $91 million in an IPO of its own.
—A federal judge dealt Merck (NYSE: [[ticker:MRK]]) a blow in a high-profile hepatitis C drug patent case, overturning a jury’s verdict that Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ: [[ticker:GILD]]) of Foster City, CA, would have to pay Merck $200 million in infringement damages. As the Wall Street Journal reported, the judge said a former attorney at Kenilworth, NJ-based Merck lied and altered patent applications to gain an advantage over Pharmasset, which Gilead ultimately bought to gain access to what would become the blockbuster sofosbuvir (Sovaldi).
—Sanofi (NYSE: [[ticker:SNY]]) continued its hostile pursuit of San Francisco’s Medivation (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MDVN]]), which sells prostate cancer drug enzalutamide (Xtandi). The French drug maker pitched Medivation investors with a raft of reasons to vote for Sanofi’s $9.3 billion bidand offered a slate of directors to replace Medivation’s board by Aug. 1.
—Merck didn’t have to get hostile with Afferent Pharmaceuticals of San Mateo, CA. Merck agreed late Thursday to buy the developer of a drug being tested to treat both chronic cough and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis for $500 million upfront and $750 million more if the drug hits all its marks.
—STAT continued its series of articles about Verily, the life science group at Alphabet (NASDAQ: [[ticker:GOOGL]]) (formerly known as Google). Reporter Charles Piller took a critical look at a few key Verily projects, including a Star Trek-like “tricorder” that would detect cancer non-invasively but has failed to meet Verily CEO Andrew Conrad’s publicly stated timelines. Two days after the article ran, Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt defended Verily at the Alphabet shareholder meeting, saying the group will “ultimately produce amazing breakthroughs.”
—The life sciences startup communities in two different cities got a boost this week. In New York, Alexandria Real Estate Equities announced a seed fund and a startup incubator inside its sprawling biotech campus in Manhattan. In Boston, Harvard University is opening the Harvard Life Lab, which will offer wet lab space for 25 to 30 life sciences startups with connections to Harvard.
—Warsaw, IN-based Zimmer Biomet (NYSE: [[ZBH]]) paid $1 billion for LDR Holdings, an Austin maker of medical devices for the spine.
—In other medical device news, Boston Scientific (NYSE: [[ticker:BSX]]) announced a restructuring expected to save the company anywhere from $115 million to $150 million by 2020. The restructuring will include job cuts, though the company didn’t specify how many and said it expects its overall ranks to “remain relatively unchanged.”
—CRISPR Therapeutics cut a deal with France’s Anagenesis Biotechnologies to gain access to a technology to help develop gene editing treatments for musculoskeletal diseases, among them Duchenne.
—Pronutria Biosciences changed its name to Axcella Health, reflecting its transformation to more of a maker of drugs than nutritional products.
Alex Lash contributed to this report
