For decades, sci­en­tists scratched their heads about KRAS, the no­to­ri­ous can­cer-caus­ing pro­tein. Its smooth ter­rain long elud­ed ma­nip­u­la­tion, large­ly due to the ab­sence of a dis­tinct pock­et for a drug to latch on to. How­ev­er, the process of tri­al and er­ror fi­nal­ly yield­ed progress — trig­ger­ing a flock of com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Am­gen, J&J, Mer­ck, and As­traZeneca, to en­gi­neer com­pounds de­signed to an­nex the oft’ mu­tat­ed onco­gene. And now, it looks like Ger­many’s Boehringer In­gel­heim has of­fi­cial­ly en­tered the fold.

The first KRAS pock­et es­tab­lished by Am­gen $AMGN for at­tack is G12C, al­though small­er ri­val Mi­rati $MRTX is at the large drug­mak­er’s heels. The KRAS G12C mu­ta­tion is found in rough­ly 14% of non-small cell lung can­cer (NSCLC) pa­tients and 5% of col­orec­tal can­cer pa­tients, who are large­ly pre­sent­ed with a poor prog­no­sis and tend to be re­sis­tant to stan­dard ther­a­pies.

On Tues­day, Ever­core ISI’s Umer Raf­fat point­ed out that Boehringer now has a clin­i­cal-stage KRAS in­hibitor in its ar­se­nal. And un­like Am­gen and Mi­rati, the Ger­man drug­mak­er’s ap­proach is a pan-KRAS in­hibitor that hits SOS1 as well as G12C. SOS1 is a pro­tein that turns KRAS from an “off” to “on” state.

Am­gen’s keen­ly watched AMGN510 made a splash at the AS­CO con­fer­ence this year af­ter a small, ear­ly study showed five out of 10 pa­tients suf­fer­ing from ad­vanced, drug-re­sis­tant NSCLC saw a par­tial re­sponse to the ex­per­i­men­tal treat­ment, in­clud­ing one who went on to achieve a com­plete re­sponse af­ter the da­ta cut­off point. Last month, those da­ta were up­dat­ed at the World Con­fer­ence on Lung Can­cer. Re­searchers tracked a 54% par­tial tu­mor re­sponse, and ob­served tu­mors shrink­ing in sev­en of 13 NSCLC pa­tients.

An­a­lysts have been in­tox­i­cat­ed with the po­ten­tial of the com­pound for this cat­e­go­ry of heav­i­ly treat­ed pa­tients with few op­tions at their dis­pos­al — and have al­ready fore­cast the drug will gen­er­ate bil­lions in peak sales, should it se­cure ap­proval.

But over the week­end at the ES­MO meet­ing in Barcelona, en­thu­si­asm for the drug out­side of lung can­cer damp­ened, af­ter Am­gen un­veiled da­ta from the tranche of col­orec­tal can­cer pa­tients. Re­searchers re­port­ed a sin­gle par­tial re­sponse among 12 col­orec­tal can­cer pa­tients.

Mean­while, Mi­rati’s Phase I/II da­ta em­a­nat­ing from its ex­per­i­men­tal drug, MRTX849, for ad­vanced sol­id tu­mors that har­bor KRAS G12C mu­ta­tions are ex­pect­ed in the fourth quar­ter. The lit­tle biotech has tied up with No­var­tis — and the two are look­ing at com­bin­ing the G12C drug with a ther­a­py that tar­gets SHP2, which func­tions as a key reg­u­la­tor of cell cy­cle con­trol.

Rev­o­lu­tion Med­i­cines has the same po­ten­tial com­bo in-house. Oth­er KRAS con­tenders in­clude Mod­er­na $MR­NA and Mer­ck’s $MRK mR­NA-5671; J&J’s $JNJ col­lab­o­ra­tion with Well­spring on ARS-3248, a G12C tar­get­ed small mol­e­cule; and AZD4785, li­censed by As­traZeneca $AZN from Io­n­is — al­though the com­pound has been dis­con­tin­ued af­ter a poor show­ing in clin­i­cal tri­als.

In Au­gust, Boehringer tied up with MD An­der­son in­ves­ti­ga­tors in Hous­ton to cre­ate a joint “vir­tu­al re­search and de­vel­op­ment cen­ter” look­ing at two pop­u­lar prospects: KRAS in­hi­bi­tion and a TRAILR2 ag­o­nis­tic an­ti­body for apop­to­sis.

As an onco­gene, KRAS has the po­ten­tial to ren­der nor­mal cells can­cer­ous. Akin to HRAS and NRAS, it be­longs to the RAS fam­i­ly of onco­genes and plays a key role in cell di­vi­sion, cell dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, and apop­to­sis.

Four years ago, when Arena CEO Amit Munshi cut its ties to a troubled weight drug and doubled down on the pipeline, a cannabinoid receptor 2 agonist figured prominently in the biotech’s future. On Tuesday evening, however, Munshi’s high hopes for the drug took a nasty hit after it failed a Phase IIb study for patients with irritable bowel syndrome pain.

Put through a randomized pace with 273 patients, researchers said it flat failed the primary endpoint among the large group with abdominal pain. But they quickly went on to highlight subgroup data, always a tricky and controversial ploy, where they spotlighted a positive p value for patients with moderate to severe pain who received the high dose of the drug — one of 3 provided in the study.

As the superbug crisis heats up around the world, Scynexis says it has new data from two interim analyses that prove its antifungal has the potential to treat a broad range of infections.

“The need for new anti-infectives capable of fighting the most resistant pathogens has never been more urgent as we confront the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic,” CEO Marco Taglietti said in a statement.

When Takeda spun out a pipeline of experimental psychiatry drugs to Neurocrine in a $2 billion deal amid a post-merger shakeout, R&D chief Andy Plump described the therapies as “very interesting but still difficult.”

On Tuesday, we got some idea of how difficult.

San Diego-based Neurocrine revealed that one of the three spotlight clinical programs they’d acquired failed the primary endpoint in a Phase II trial for schizophrenia, registering a negative outcome on the change from baseline in the positive and negative syndrome scale/negative symptom factor score (PANSS NSFS).

Merck took a big gamble when it opted to jump into the Covid-19 vaccine race late, and made an equally momentous decision to back out in late January. Now, looking to chip in on the effort, Merck reportedly agreed to team up with one of the companies that has already crossed the finish line.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday is expected to announce a partnership between drugmakers Merck and Johnson & Johnson to jointly produce J&J’s recombinant protein Covid-19 vaccine that received the FDA’s emergency use authorization Saturday, the Washington Post reported.