This week, BioN­Tech pre­sent­ed the in­dus­try’s most in-depth look so far at how PD-(L)1xVEGF bis­pecifics are be­ing de­vel­oped in can­cer at its R&D Day in New York City.

Fol­low­ing the event, End­points News sat down with two of the com­pa­ny’s co-founders, CEO Uğur Şahin and CMO Özlem Türe­ci. The dis­cus­sion cov­ered BioN­Tech’s part­ner­ship with Chi­nese biotech Bio­theus on the ex­per­i­men­tal can­cer drug pumi­ta­mig, how Şahin and Türe­ci mea­sure suc­cess, and why BioN­Tech ul­ti­mate­ly de­cid­ed to buy out its part­ner.

Şahin and Türe­ci al­so talked about turn­ing that buy­out around in­to a $11 bil­lion-plus li­cens­ing deal with Bris­tol My­ers Squibb, an agree­ment that has the com­pa­nies set to sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­pete in this new im­muno-on­col­o­gy space. The fol­low­ing in­ter­view has been edit­ed sub­stan­tial­ly for length and clar­i­ty.

Gate Bio­science has raised $65 mil­lion to pro­pel its so-called "mol­e­c­u­lar gate" drugs in­to hu­man stud­ies. The com­pa­ny is work­ing on de­vel­op­ing an un­con­ven­tion­al type of small-mol­e­cule pro­tein de­grad­er for im­mune and brain dis­eases.

The start­up’s Se­ries B round in­clud­ed a num­ber of well-known in­vestors, such as For­bion and Eli Lil­ly, which were new in­vestors in Gate, though Lil­ly penned a part­ner­ship with the com­pa­ny ear­li­er this year. The round al­so in­clud­ed Gate’s pre­vi­ous in­vestors Ver­sant, a16z, GV and ARCH.

While some pro­teins stay in the cell once they are made, oth­ers are se­cret­ed out of the cell. Gate’s goal is to stop those dis­charged, dis­ease-caus­ing pro­teins.

Day One Bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals is bail­ing out Mer­sana Ther­a­peu­tics two years af­ter the an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate mak­er’s lead ovar­i­an can­cer drug failed a piv­otal tri­al.

Day One plans to pay $129 mil­lion up­front to buy Mer­sana, the com­pa­nies an­nounced Thurs­day morn­ing. The to­tal deal val­ue could more than dou­ble to $285 mil­lion de­pend­ing on the suc­cess of Mer­sana’s B7-H4-tar­get­ed ADC, up­on which the deal is cen­tered.

That ADC, known as Emi-Le, has been stud­ied pri­mar­i­ly in triple-neg­a­tive breast can­cer. Mov­ing for­ward, an ad­di­tion­al fo­cus for the ADC ap­pears to be a rare can­cer called ade­noid cys­tic car­ci­no­ma, based on Mer­sana CEO Mar­ty Hu­ber's state­ment an­nounc­ing the deal.