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ARTICLE | Preclinical News

Jan 16 Preclinical Quick Takes: Deerfield's Orchard partners with Yeda; Acuitas-Penn flu vaccine in newborns; plus Regeneron, Genentech-Gladstone and Banyan

January 17, 2020 12:42 AM UTC
Updated on Jan 17, 2020 at 8:02 PM UTC

Deerfield forms Orchard Innovations in Yeda collaboration on translation
Deerfield Management Co. launched Orchard Innovations LLC to pursue translational R&D derived from Weizmann Institute of Science research. Yeda Research and Development Co. Ltd., Weizmann’s commercial arm, will propose projects to a scientific committee representing Weizmann, Yeda and Deerfield. Deerfield will allocate up to $130 million over 10 years, and Orchard will have rights to the IP. The initiative follows Deerfield’s September launch of a New York City biotech incubator campus (see “Deerfield’s $635M Incubator Is Latest Boost For NYC Biotech”).

Acuitas, Penn mRNA flu vaccine efficacy in newborns
Building on research reported in 2018 in Nature Communications, a team from the University of Pennsylvania and Acuitas Therapeutics showed that their mRNA vaccine could overcome the inhibitory effects of maternal antibodies on influenza vaccination in infants. Described in a January Science Translational Medicine paper, lipid nanoparticles encapsulating a nucleoside-modified mRNA encoding influenza A HA from an H1N1 strain increased titers of de novo flu-specific antibodies and decreased weight loss in infected mouse pups with circulating maternal anti-flu antibodies. The team also showed the mRNA vaccine elicited a stronger antibody response than an approved H1N1 HA protein-based flu vaccine...