The J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco is back for 2025 and here at Fierce Biotech, we’re going to bring you all the latest updates live from the life sciences event of the year.
As is tradition, we’ve already had a few notable mid-range deals and some bumper biotech fund raises in the week leading up to the event. This included Lonza's Synaffix adding Boehringer to its constellation of partners with a $1.3 billion ADC tech pact, with Roche following suit in that space, penning a potential $780 million ADC deal with Chugai, as Sanofi inked a $400 million biobucks pact with Alloy’s antisense platform.
There was also a major $410 million venture raise for oral GLP-1 player Verdiva as neurological focused Tenvie launched with a cool $200 million.
But where the biotech gods giveth, they also taketh away. There was some major pruning across multiple biotechs, including for Intellia, Galapagos, Cassava, Scribe IGM, Y-mAbs and Passage Bio, as they streamline into 2025.
What can we expect from the conference itself? The Fierce team will be on the ground hunting down the biggest announcements and interviews, as well as running our own events, so stay tuned.
Check out our daily updates below, and Fierce Pharma's here, for all the latest from JPM today and come back each day this week for your roundups.
Monday 7:30 p.m. ET Jan. 13
Transitioning to a commercial company isn’t stopping Denali Therapeutics from letting ambition flow through its pipeline.
The Bay Area firm is planning to file for regulatory approval for its lead asset, Hunter syndrome drug DNL310, or tividenofusp alfa, early this year, and has built a clinical manufacturing facility to make it, CEO Ryan Watts, Ph.D., told Fierce Biotech during an on-site interview.
At the same time, Denali plans to bring one or two new drugs into the clinic every year for the next three years. The company outlined its plans in a press release on Jan. 13, in advance of Watts’ presentation tomorrow morning.
This steady drumbeat of new clinical prospects is possible because they’re built on Denali’s proven Transport Vehicle platform, Watts said. The firm’s focus is neurodegenerative diseases, but targeting them means getting drugs across the blood-brain barrier (BBB)—long a tricky prospect.
Denali’s platform binds a payload, be it an antibody, enzyme or oligonucleotide, to a molecule that targets transferrin receptors on blood vessels in the brain. These receptors shuttle iron across the BBB, and Denali has co-opted them to get drugs through the finicky barrier.
Keeping drug candidates moving through such a packed pipeline requires partnerships, and Denali already has several with firms like Biogen, Sanofi and Takeda. The J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, Watts said, is a great place to forge these partnerships.
“I really like it because the activation energy is lower to just meet with people in person,” Watts said. “So many companies that you may partner with are in locations from Indianapolis, to Boston, to New Jersey, and it's just great to be here and kick off the year.”
Treatments for Alzheimer’s that target key proteins linked to the disease, amyloid beta and tau, are high on Watts’ personal list of pipeline priorities; his late mother developed cognitive deficits a year before he founded Denali, and he himself is at slightly higher risk of developing the disease. But he says he’s also pragmatic.
“You invent this platform—show it works in areas where there is a big unmet need and where the science is clear,” he said. “That's a great starting point. And then you can tackle these bigger, tougher diseases.”
Monday 3:00 p.m. ET Jan. 13
It’s a beautiful, sunny day in San Francisco—a significant difference from the torrential rains marking the past two years. Despite the sunshine, the streets surrounding the Westin St. Francis feel quieter than previous years.
“It feels like there may be fewer people,” Tris Pharma’s chief business officer James Hackworth, Ph.D., told Fierce Biotech during an on-site interview. “But I’ve only been in a couple of locations, so it's possible that that's just perception.”
Tris is running two phase 3 trials assessing cebranopadol, a dual nociceptin/orphanin FQ peptide (NOP) receptor and µ-opioid peptide (MOP) receptor agonist in development to treat acute pain. Topline results are expected in the first quarter of this year, with cebranopadol holding the potential to become a first-in-class drug for pain.
For Hackworth, the conference provides the chance to engage in face-to-face discussions and raise awareness around the investigational oral med, which is also being studied in phase 2 studies for chronic pain.
“We don't want to miss a chance to talk to anybody,” Hackworth said. “We've been a little under the radar, and I think that's starting to change. People are starting to reach out to us more and more.”
He credited part of that rising interest to Vertex’s upcoming FDA decision for suzetrigine, an oral NaV1.8 pain signal inhibitor designed to treat acute pain. An approval decision is expected by Jan. 30.
“There's a desperate need for more medications in this space,” Hackworth said about Vertex. “Frankly, we’re rooting for them.”
Monday 2:30 p.m. ET Jan. 13
Roche is not giving up on Prothena-partnered prasinezumab in Parkinson's disease just yet despite a phase 2b flop, according to Roche Pharma CEO Teresa Graham. While the Padova trial missed its primary endpoint of time to confirmed motor progression, Roche has noted a more pronounced effect for the anti-alpha-synuclein antibody in levodopa-pretreated patients. Story
Elsewhere, Roche also recently suffered a trial failure for its TIGIT inhibitor tiragolumab. In response to a Fierce Biotech question about what Roche's next big play in immuno-oncology would be, Graham said that's a question that every pharmaceutical company has to face.
"There are a lot of interesting mechanisms out there. We're actively looking at working with them, and I think you can expect that we will continue to be a player in immuno-oncology going forward," Graham said, without going into details.
In immuno-oncology, Roche just bought off-the-shelf CAR-T company Poseida Therapeutics.
Monday 10:30 a.m. ET Jan.13
AbbVie is handing China’s Simcere Zaiming an undisclosed upfront payment with the potential of up to $1.05 billion in milestone payments for a phase 1-stage trispecific antibody. The candidate, dubbed SIM0500, targets GPRC5D, BCMA and CD3 and is already in phase 1 trials for multiple myeloma in the U.S. and China. Story.
Monday 9:15 a.m. ET Jan.13
In advance of its presentation later today, Vera Therapeutics announced that it has signed an exclusive license agreement for a new fusion protein for B cell diseases from Stanford University. The drug candidate, VT-109, targets B-cell activating factor (BAFF) and a proliferation-inducing ligand (APRIL). Vera can develop and market VT-109 in return for undisclosed upfront and milestone payments that weren't disclosed. Release
Monday 9:00 a.m. ET Jan.13
The Eli Lilly rumors were true. First reported over the weekend by the Financial Times, Lilly has confirmed there's no sting in the tale for Scorpion Tx as it snaps up the cancer biotech for up to $2.5 billion. Story.
Monday 8:00 a.m. ET Jan.13
Boston’s Ginkgo Bioworks is tapping Astellas’ Universal Cells on its quest to improve stem cell-based personalized medicines. Under a research collaboration unveiled Monday morning, Ginkgo and Universal Cells have joined forces in a bid to optimize next-generation induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived cancer therapies. Release.
Monday 7:30 a.m. ET Jan.13
About 100 days into the CEO role at Kyverna Therapeutics, Warner Biddle has determined the strategic priorities for the California biotech, which aims to deliver the first approved CAR-T therapy in an autoimmune disease. Check out the Fierce Biotech interview. Story.
Monday 6:30 a.m. ET Jan. 13
Rappta Therapeutics sticks to SpringWorks Therapeutics for a preclinical, first-in-class molecular glue targeting uterine cancers, in a deal worth $13 million upfront. Release.
Monday 4:30 a.m. ET Jan. 13
Tune Therapeutics enters the JPM dance floor with a bumper $175 million series B raise for its epigenetic silencing drug against chronic hepatitis B. Story.
Monday 2:30 a.m. ET Jan. 13
German pharma Bayer also comes out the gates at pace with news that its BlueRock Parkinson’s disease cell therapy is moving into late-stage testing, with that trial set to be the first registrational phase 3 for an investigational allogeneic cell therapy in the area.
Monday 2:00 a.m. ET Jan. 13
GSK clearly wanted an early run at the news cycle, sending word early Monday morning that it had tied up a GI cancer buyout deal with biotech IDRx worth up to $1.15 billion. Story.
Saturday 6:00 a.m. ET Jan. 10
Gilead roared into JPM25 with a major $1.7 billion deal, that includes a huge $250 million upfront, for access to Leo Pharma's preclinical inflammation drugs. Story.