Chi­na is re­port­ed­ly ap­prov­ing its 6th PD-1(L)1 drug in just over a year — and Am­gen will be pleased with this one.

The OK for tislelizum­ab would be the first mar­ket­ed prod­uct to be de­vel­oped by BeiGene, the em­i­nent Bei­jing-based biotech that Am­gen re­cent­ly took a $2.7 bil­lion stake in. Chi­na’s Cen­ter for Drug Eval­u­a­tion has com­plet­ed tech­ni­cal re­view and sent the NDA to the Na­tion­al Med­ical Prod­ucts Ad­min­is­tra­tion with a rec­om­men­da­tion to ap­prove, Chi­nese me­dia out­let Jiemi­an re­port­ed.

BeiGene is all set to hit the ground run­ning. Hav­ing part­nered with Cel­gene to hawk Revlim­id, Abrax­ane and Vi­daza in Chi­na, the drug­mak­er has built a 700-strong com­mer­cial­iza­tion team. The Am­gen deal al­so puts them in charge of sell­ing Xge­va (deno­sum­ab), Kypro­lis (carfil­zomib) and Blin­cy­to (bli­na­tu­momab) — pro­vid­ed the last two come through af­ter Phase III de­vel­op­ment.

Fol­low­ing the ini­tial in­di­ca­tion of chron­ic Hodgkin’s lym­phoma, BeiGene has al­ready filed an sN­DA to use tislelizum­ab in urothe­lial car­ci­no­ma.

While Cel­gene once held rights to the drug out­side Chi­na, BeiGene re­gained glob­al rights af­ter its US part­ner broke off the pact in the wake of a buy­out by Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb, the mak­er of Op­di­vo.

The fast pace re­flects just how rapid­ly the check­point mar­ket has evolved in Chi­na. Jun­shi and In­novent scored the first ap­provals for their home­grown ther­a­pies, Tuoyi and Tyvyt, though ac­cord­ing to Jiemi­an it’s Mer­ck’s Keytru­da that racked up the most sales: RMB$2 bil­lion ($280 mil­lion) since last Ju­ly. The num­bers for Jun­shi’s Tuoyi and In­novent’s Tyvyt are RMB$332 mil­lion ($47 mil­lion) and RMB$308 mil­lion ($43 mil­lion), re­spec­tive­ly.

Giv­en that com­pet­i­tive — some would say com­modi­tized — land­scape, BeiGene is look­ing to make a name for it­self through zanubru­ti­nib, a BTK in­hibitor po­si­tioned to chal­lenge the dom­i­nance of Im­bru­vi­ca. The drug is un­der re­view at the FDA af­ter nab­bing break­through sta­tus.

The firehose of biopharma news is gushing these days.

That’s why broader and deeper is the theme for 2021 at Endpoints. You can expect new coverage outside our core R&D focus, with deeper reporting in some key areas. When John Carroll and I launched Endpoints nearly five years ago, we were wading in waist-high waters. Now we’re a team of 25 full-time staffers (and growing) with plans to cover the flood of biopharma news, Endpoints-style.

It’s time for a new FDA commissioner to come on board, a rite of passage for Joe Biden’s administration that should help seal the new president’s rep on seeking out the experts to lead the government over the next 4 years.

As of now, the competition for the top job appears to have narrowed down to 2 people: The longtime CDER chief Janet Woodcock and Joshua Sharfstein, the former principal deputy at the FDA under Peggy Hamburg. Both were appointed by Barack Obama.

GlaxoSmithKline’s HIV unit ViiV was dealt a stinging loss back in late 2019 when the FDA slammed the brakes on its application for a once-monthly injection based on manufacturing issues. Now, with that roadblock in the rearview, ViiV has finally made good on its promise to change the HIV game.

The FDA on Thursday approved ViiV’s Cabenuva (cabotegravir and rilpivirine) as a long acting, once-monthly therapy for HIV-positive adults who are virologically suppressed and on a stable antiviral regimen.