Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb $BMY has a fresh Phase III set­back to re­port to­day on its all-im­por­tant PD-1 drug Op­di­vo. The phar­ma gi­ant says that their drug com­bined with ra­di­a­tion failed to sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prove the over­all sur­vival rate of glioblas­toma pa­tients com­pared to a con­trol group re­ceiv­ing chemo plus ra­di­a­tion.

As usu­al, re­searchers will hold back the da­ta for a fu­ture con­fer­ence, but Check­Mate-498 is an­oth­er write-off.

“GBM is a no­to­ri­ous­ly ag­gres­sive can­cer,” notes Bris­tol-My­ers on­col­o­gy R&D chief Fouad Namouni, who ex­pressed their dis­ap­point­ment with the fail­ure.

Fouad Namouni

Op­di­vo earned $1.8 bil­lion in Q1 alone for Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb, a 19% gain over the same pe­ri­od a year ago. That’s no small ac­com­plish­ment in bio­phar­ma, but it al­so marks a sec­ond place po­si­tion be­hind an in­creas­ing­ly dom­i­nant Mer­ck — $2.3 bil­lion in Q1, up 55% — which has had far more suc­cess­es to re­port from the R&D group.

It’s un­like­ly that any of the an­a­lysts had much up­side built in for glioblas­toma, the most com­mon brain can­cer which has proven to be in­cred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to slow down. So don’t look for any dra­mat­ic stock moves. On the oth­er hand, the phar­ma gi­ant has been plagued by set­backs in the clin­ic. 

The com­pa­ny had to yank its ap­pli­ca­tion us­ing a high tu­mor mu­ta­tion­al bur­den af­ter get­ting some neg­a­tive feed­back from the FDA. Their com­bo ap­proach us­ing Yer­voy failed in non-small cell lung can­cer, and that fol­lowed a fail­ure against the stan­dard of care for sec­ond-line small cell lung can­cer. A brain can­cer flop may have been pre­dictable, but it al­so rais­es ques­tions about their R&D strat­e­gy at a time Mer­ck has been ad­vanc­ing with its chemo com­bo ap­proach.

With some key read­outs due on front­line lung can­cer, Bris­tol-My­ers is in a make-or-break po­si­tion with Op­di­vo, with an­a­lysts like Wolfe’s Tim An­der­son won­der­ing if they’re head­ed for a peak in Op­di­vo sales in 2020, fol­lowed by a flat line as com­pe­ti­tion builds around the world. That al­ready may have dri­ven their $74 bil­lion Cel­gene ac­qui­si­tion, which will shift fo­cus to a slate of 6 late-stage drugs up for an ap­proval de­ci­sion.

During BIO this year, I had a chance to moderate a panel among some of the top tech experts in biopharma on their real-world use of artificial intelligence in R&D. There’s been a lot said about the potential of AI, but I wanted to explore more about what some of the larger players are actually doing with this technology today, and how they see it advancing in the future. It was a fascinating exchange, which you can see here. The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity. — John Carroll

As several Big Pharma players secure biotech partners in the oncolytic virus space for new immuno-oncology combos, Cowen and Perceptive Advisors have come out with their own bet on a startup that promises to shine.

The marquee investors are joining MPM, Deerfield, Celgene, Astellas, Arkin and UBS in backing the drug developer, Oncorus, which will now deploy the $79.5 million in Series B cash toward clinical development of its lead program. Other new investors include Surveyor Capital, Sphera Funds, IMM Investment, QUAD Investment Management, UTC Investment, SV Investment Corp and Shinhan Investment-Private Equity, the last five of which are Korean-based funds.

Nearly two years after making its public debut, UK-based NuCana’s mission to make chemotherapies more potent and safer was dealt a blow, after a pivotal study testing its lead experimental drug halted enrollment in a hard-to-treat advanced form of cancer, following a futility analysis.

The drug, Acelarin, is being evaluated for use in metastatic pancreatic cancer patients who were not considered suitable for combination chemotherapy. In the late-stage ACELARATE study — which compared the experimental drug against the chemotherapy gemcitabine — 200 patients had been enrolled by the sponsor, Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, before an analysis from an independent safety and data monitoring panel suggested the study’s main goal would not be met.