Ap­ple Tree Part­ners, a ven­ture firm and cre­ator of dozens of biotechs like Akero Ther­a­peu­tics and Chi­nook Ther­a­peu­tics, says mul­ti­ple port­fo­lio com­pa­nies are at risk of clo­sure as it fights its main lim­it­ed part­ner in court.

The ven­ture firm claims that its key in­vestor, the fam­i­ly of­fice of Russ­ian bil­lion­aire Dmit­ry Ry­bolovlev, is with­hold­ing mon­ey need­ed to keep sev­er­al of its port­fo­lio com­pa­nies afloat. The sit­u­a­tion is an "emer­gency," and an undis­closed num­ber of star­tups in the ATP port­fo­lio "face im­mi­nent col­lapse," the VC firm wrote in a court fil­ing in Delaware ear­li­er this month.

ATP al­leges that Ry­bolovlev's fam­i­ly of­fice, which is called Rigmo­ra Hold­ings, is try­ing to sab­o­tage the ven­ture fir­m's com­pa­nies to the point that they are forced to shut­ter. In the court fil­ing, ATP de­scribed the moves as "preda­to­ry in­ten­tions."

Al­most three years ago, long­time biotech vet Lau­ra Shawver cheer­ful­ly her­ald­ed the ar­rival of her lat­est start­up with a col­or­ful ob­ser­va­tion on the con­flu­ence of its mR­NA and CAR-T tech.

“To me, it’s as if the Covid-19 vac­cine and cell ther­a­py had a ba­by and this is what they pro­duced,” Shawver told me about Cap­stan Ther­a­peu­tics’ in vi­vo CAR-T as­pi­ra­tions.

Now, days af­ter start­ing a Phase 1 study in healthy vol­un­teers, the clin­i­cal-stage tod­dler is get­ting a large phar­ma par­ent to adopt their work and car­ry it through hu­man stud­ies.

Ab­b­Vie an­nounced on Mon­day that it is buy­ing out Cap­stan for up to $2.1 bil­lion in cash at clos­ing.

Am­gen’s an­ti­body can­di­date has cleared a late-stage tri­al in cer­tain stom­ach can­cer pa­tients, but some side ef­fects were more prob­lem­at­ic than ex­pect­ed based on pre­vi­ous study re­sults.

The drug­mak­er’s be­mar­ituzum­ab plus chemother­a­py achieved a “sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant and clin­i­cal­ly mean­ing­ful” im­prove­ment in over­all sur­vival in the Phase 3 FOR­TI­TUDE-101 tri­al com­pared with chemother­a­py and place­bo, ac­cord­ing to a Mon­day re­lease.

The study en­rolled more than 500 pa­tients with lo­cal­ly ad­vanced or metasta­t­ic gas­tric or gas­troe­sophageal junc­tion can­cer that can’t be re­moved with surgery. Pa­tients' tu­mors over-ex­pressed a pro­tein called fi­brob­last growth fac­tor re­cep­tor 2b (FGFR2b) and weren’t pos­i­tive for HER2. Be­mar­ituzum­ab is de­signed to tar­get FGFR2b.

Plus, news about Lave­rock Ther­a­peu­tics, Bris­tol My­ers Squibb, So­bi, Pli­ant Ther­a­peu­tics, Bay­er and Take­da:

IN­mune Bio’s Alzheimer’s dis­ease drug fails Phase 2 study: The com­pa­ny was test­ing XPro, a TNF in­hibitor, in 200 pa­tients with ear­ly AD and in­flam­ma­tion bio­mark­ers. XPro did not meet the pri­ma­ry end­point on the Ear­ly Mild Alzheimer’s Cog­ni­tive Com­pos­ite test. A sub­group of 100 pa­tients with two or more bio­mark­ers saw some promise, IN­mune said. The com­pa­ny’s stock price IN­MB fell about  60% on Mon­day morn­ing. — Max Gel­man

Bridge­Bio Phar­ma sells off 60% of roy­al­ties for Be­y­ont­tra in Eu­rope: The com­pa­ny will get $300 mil­lion from Health­Care Roy­al­ty and Blue Owl Cap­i­tal funds in ex­change for the per­cent­age of roy­al­ties on the first $500 mil­lion in Eu­ro­pean sales of the AT­TR-CM treat­ment. Be­y­ont­tra is ap­proved in the US and Eu­rope, where it’s be­ing com­mer­cial­ized by Bay­er. — Jaimy Lee