There’s more bad news for the an­tibi­otics R&D field Thurs­day evening.

Ken Hillan

A few weeks af­ter the FDA green-light­ed Achao­gen’s $AKAO an­tibi­ot­ic Zem­dri (pla­zomicin) for uri­nary tract in­fec­tions but shunt­ed aside their ap­pli­ca­tion on blood­stream in­fec­tions, the biotech is lay­ing off rank-and-file re­searchers and let­ting go its top re­search ex­ecs.

Al­to­geth­er the com­pa­ny says it is cut­ting 80 jobs — 28% of the staff — as it chops spend­ing on ear­ly-stage re­search and de­vel­op­ment, tech­ni­cal op­er­a­tions and gen­er­al and ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­pens­es.

Lee Swem

Ken Hillan, pres­i­dent R&D, will leave in mid-Oc­to­ber, while CSO Lee Swem will de­part a few weeks ear­li­er.

Re­search will be nar­rowed to fo­cus on C-Scape, an oral be­ta-lac­tam/be­ta-lac­ta­mase in­hibitor com­bi­na­tion, and new amino­gly­co­side an­tibi­otics, which can count on some non-di­lu­tive fund­ing com­mit­ments to con­tin­ue the work. The main task at Achao­gen will be com­mer­cial­iz­ing their ap­proved prod­uct while hunt­ing a Eu­ro­pean OK to ex­pand that work.

For the past 10 years pub­lic health of­fi­cials have been rais­ing a hue and cry for new an­tibi­otics as old stan­dards strug­gle against a ris­ing tide of drug re­sis­tance. But the bulk of the need can still be met with cheap stand­by ther­a­pies, mak­ing it hard to prof­it by them. As a re­sult, Big Phar­ma bowed out large­ly, un­der­scored by No­var­tis’ re­cent de­ci­sion to join the ex­o­dus out of the field. As­traZeneca and oth­ers had done it years ago.

Another big drug approval came through on Friday afternoon as the FDA OK’d AbbVie’s upadacitinib — an oral JAK1 inhibitor that is hitting the rheumatoid arthritis market with a black box warning of serious malignancies, infections and thrombosis reflecting fears associated with the class.

It will be sold as Rinvoq — at a wholesale price of $59,000 a year — and will likely soon face competition from a drug that AbbVie once controlled, and spurned. Reuters reports that a 4-week supply of Humira, by comparison, is $5,174, adding up to about $67,000 a year.

ICER has some strong words for PTC, Sarepta and the FDA as the US drug price watchdog concludes that as currently priced, their respective new treatments for Duchenne muscular dystrophy are decidedly not cost-effective.

The final report — which cements the conclusions of a draft issued in May — incorporates the opinion of a panel of 17 experts ICER convened in a public meeting last month. It also based its analysis of Emflaza (deflazacort) and Exondys 51 (eteplirsen) on updated annual costs of $81,400 and over $1 million, respectively, after citing “incorrect” lower numbers in the initial calculations.

There’s nothing quite like a big patent win when it comes to burnishing your prospects in the pipeline. And for Amgen, which seems to have rescued Enbrel for a run to 2029, the cheering section on Wall Street is now fixed on AMG 510 and a key rival.

And it didn’t take much data to do it. 

There was the first snapshot of a handful of patients, with a 50% response rate. Then came word that Amgen researchers are also tracking responses in different cancers, at least one in colorectal cancer and appendiceal too. 

→ Bain Capital is deploying one of its top investors to Cerevel Therapeutics, steering a $350 million-plus neuro play carved out of Pfizer. Orly Mishan — a co-founder and principal of Bain’s life sciences unit — was involved in the partnership that birthed the biotech spinout in the first place. As Cerevel’s first chief business officer, she is tasked with corporate development, program management as well as technical operations. 

After a “hot” period of rapid growth between 2009 and 2012, and a relatively “cooler” period of slower growth from 2013 to 2015, China has once again become a top-of-mind priority for the CEOs of most large, multinational pharmaceutical companies.

At the International Pharma Forum, hosted in March in Beijing by the R&D Based Pharmaceutical Association Committee (RDPAC) and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), no fewer than seven CEOs of major multinational pharmaceutical firms participated, including GSK, Eli Lilly, LEO Pharma, Merck KGaA, Pfizer, Sanofi and UCB. A few days earlier, the CEOs of several other large multinationals attended the China Development Forum, an annual business forum hosted by the research arm of China’s State Council. It’s hard to imagine any other country, except the US, having such drawing power at CEO level.