We’ve up­grad­ed the End­points web ex­pe­ri­ence for the first time since our launch three years ago. It was built from scratch in­ter­nal­ly with the read­er in mind to be a clean­er and more use­able plat­form. We have some spe­cif­ic goals in mind for the de­sign, which I’ll de­scribe be­low. And for those in­ter­est­ed, I’d like to go in­to some depth be­hind the over­all process and back­end be­hind End­points News.

But first, a word of thanks to the CRO Bio­rasi for their ex­clu­sive spon­sor­ship of the re­design. End­points’ chief rev­enue of­fi­cer Mike Peck and I met the team a year ago at a con­fer­ence, where we talked about clin­i­cal out­sourc­ing and its place in drug de­vel­op­ment. Soon, we de­vel­oped a brand cam­paign tied to the End­points brand re­fresh, and over the next two weeks you’ll see the re­sults of that across the site.

I set out three ma­jor goals for the re­design. They were:

• In­crease the con­ver­sion rate of web vis­i­tors in­to ba­sic sub­scribers
• In­crease the av­er­age num­ber of sto­ries read per vis­it
• 2x im­prove­ment on the de­sign, fit, and fin­ish

The first two can be ob­jec­tive­ly mea­sured. And in the 48 hours since we soft launched the site, we’ve al­ready seen im­prove­ments. Im­prov­ing the rate at which new web vis­i­tors will­ing­ly and vol­un­tar­i­ly sub­scribe to get the ba­sic End­points email prod­uct is pure or­gan­ic growth and re­mains our #1 mar­ket­ing KPI. We crossed 50,000 re­cent­ly. Three years ago, John Car­roll and I kicked things off with around 1,000 per­son­al con­tacts who were our Day One sub­scribers. And in­creas­ing the av­er­age num­ber of sto­ries read per vis­it is a crit­i­cal mea­sure of the dis­cov­er­abil­i­ty of our news con­tent. We were av­er­ag­ing around 1.2 sto­ries per vis­i­tor. We ex­pect to triple that num­ber with this new de­sign.

The last goal — a 2x im­prove­ment in the de­sign — is a sub­jec­tive one. And to do it jus­tice re­quires a look that reach­es back to well be­fore the ori­gins of End­points News. I’ll do that be­low for the read­ers who are in­ter­est­ed.

For the rest, just know the de­sign was cre­at­ed with you, the read­er, in mind. End­points’ tech/de­sign team is deeply com­mit­ted to in­creas­ing the use­abil­i­ty of the web­site. And that goes dou­ble for our pre­mi­um sub­scribers (check out the new read­er pro­file fea­ture for a glimpse).

If you de­pend on End­points, but haven’t up­grad­ed to a pre­mi­um sub­scrip­tion — now is the time. Our En­ter­prise plan of­fer is a trans­par­ent, un­lim­it­ed seat-li­cense for com­pa­nies for a flat $1,000/year re­gard­less of head­count. And the In­sid­er plan is $200/year for in­di­vid­u­als. You can see all the ben­e­fits here.

Once again, thanks to Bio­rasi for their ex­clu­sive spon­sor­ship of End­points News dur­ing the #BIO2019 con­ven­tion. You’ll see their brand place­ments across the new plat­forms for the next two weeks, with a we­bi­nar launch­ing lat­er in the year. I en­cour­age you to check out their new web­site as well.

We hope you en­joy the new End­points ex­pe­ri­ence.

About the process and de­sign

John Car­roll de­scribed the ear­li­est days of End­points News re­cent­ly. It was a ful­ly boot­strapped ven­ture with four vir­tu­al em­ploy­ees.

Long­time read­ers know that John and I were at a pre­vi­ous com­pa­ny. And when we found­ed End­points, we knew it was go­ing to be a ful­ly boot­strapped ven­ture. We had a well-known ed­i­tor. And with tools like Word­Press, start­ing a me­dia com­pa­ny to­day is so easy, any­one can do it.

But there was no bud­get for a de­sign­er. So the task fell be­tween our CTO Ig­or Yavych and my­self. Frankly, we’re no de­sign­ers.

Last year, thanks to the suc­cess of our paid sub­scrip­tion cam­paigns, we were able to start build­ing out our team. We brought on board Valentin Manov as our cre­ative di­rec­tor, and the new fit and fin­ish you see to­day are his con­tri­bu­tions.

It was vi­tal­ly im­por­tant to me that once we had a de­sign bud­get, we would make “good de­sign” an in­ter­nal ca­pa­bil­i­ty — not some­thing we’d out­source. When de­sign­ers have ac­cess to the on­line news­room, they get to see what’s im­por­tant to ed­i­tors and that in turn shapes their read­er-fac­ing work. We did not want to go to an out­side agency and ask for pitch­es on what they thought our news ex­pe­ri­ence ought to be.

Back in March, I flew to Sofia, Bul­gar­ia to meet up with Valentin and Ig­or and fi­nal­ize the ba­sic out­lines of the de­sign you see to­day. We named this re­lease “Rakia,” which is the most pop­u­lar brandy in the Balka­ns.

We’re ea­ger to know what you think about the de­sign.

PS: In or­der to em­brace the newest tech­nolo­gies that are com­ing, we had to end sup­port of some very old web browsers. Old­er ver­sions of In­ter­net Ex­plor­er are no longer sup­port­ed: If you’re on a PC, Mi­crosoft’s Edge brows­er is ex­cel­lent. Ig­or rec­om­mends the Opera Brows­er. My rec­om­men­da­tion? The lat­est ver­sion of Chrome will al­ways do.

Dupixent, the blockbuster anti-inflammatory drug from Sanofi and Regeneron, has cleared a high-stakes Phase III study in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the companies announced Thursday morning.

If they hold up in a second, identical trial, the data pave the way for Dupixent to become the first biologic to treat patients whose COPD remains uncontrolled despite being on maximal standard-of-care inhaled therapy — the patient population studied in the pivotal program. The companies had spotlighted this as a key readout as they look to expand the Dupixent franchise and explore its full potential.

Incyte touted an accelerated approval for its PD-1 retifanlimab in a rare skin cancer on Wednesday, roughly a year and a half after the drug suffered a rejection in squamous cell carcinoma of the anal canal (SCAC).

Retifanlimab, marketed as Zynyz, was approved for metastatic or recurrent locally advanced Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC), a fast-growing skin cancer typically characterized by a single, painless nodule. It’s roughly 40 times rarer than melanoma, according to the nonprofit Skin Cancer Foundation — but incidence is growing, particularly among older adults, Incyte said in its announcement.

Novartis is calling off a UK-based trial for Leqvio in the primary prevention of cardiovascular events in patients with high cholesterol, the company confirmed on Wednesday.

The Swiss pharma giant made the decision after “careful evaluation,” a spokesperson told Endpoints News via email. The trial, dubbed ORION-17, was planned in partnership with England’s National Health Service (NHS) and was part of the company’s strategy to establish Leqvio as a standard of care in cardiovascular disease management.