Eli Lil­ly took a hit Tues­day morn­ing as the phar­ma gi­ant re­vealed just how painful the with­draw­al of Lartru­vo will be for its on­col­o­gy op­er­a­tions while the Cialis fran­chise gets eat­en up by gener­ics. Less vis­i­ble was a de­ci­sion to dump two mid-stage drugs from its pipeline op­er­a­tions, both of which had fig­ured promi­nent­ly as two of its best longterm hopes in the field.

Out in the Q1 cleanup at Lil­ly is the CHK1 drug prex­as­ert­ib (LY2606368) and their Phase II PI3k/mTOR in­hibitor, LY3023414. Both of these drugs were spot­light­ed in the sum­mer of 2017 as Eli Lil­ly an­nounced plans to con­cen­trate their R&D group in on­col­o­gy on 7 key pro­grams they felt had the best shot at go­ing on to be­com­ing ma­jor play­ers in the mar­ket. 

The oth­er 5 projects were: TIM-3 MAb, PD-L1 MAb, ERK 1/2 in­hibitor, TGFb RI KI.

At the same time, Lil­ly al­so an­nounced plans to part­ner out 7 oth­er drugs.

Lil­ly to­day had to cut its 2019 earn­ings fore­cast by $3 bil­lion on its col­lec­tive headaches, drop­ping in­to the $22.0 to $22.5 bil­lion range. Its shares $LLY tum­bled 3% as an­a­lysts got a chance to chew over the un­ex­pect­ed re­ver­sal, which comes as Lil­ly’s di­a­betes fran­chise re­mains un­der in­tense pres­sure to rein in prices.

These pres­sures ar­rive af­ter Lil­ly has tak­en a se­ries of hits that have crimped its ex­pec­ta­tions. This morn­ing In­cyte not­ed that it de­cid­ed to cut any fur­ther R&D in­vest­ments on their part­nered pro­gram for baric­i­tinib, which on­ly man­aged to crawl to the mar­ket at a low­er dose than they had ad­vo­cat­ed for af­ter reg­u­la­tors raised safe­ty con­cerns for the JAK in­hibitor.

Im­age: Shut­ter­stock

In a bewildering twist to the long-suffering market for antibiotics — there has actually been a bidding war for an antibiotic company: Tetraphase.

It all started back in March, when the maker of Xerava (an FDA approved therapy for complicated intra-abdominal infections) said it had received an offer from AcelRx for an all-stock deal valued at $14.4 million.

The offer was well-timed. Xerava was approved in 2018, four years after Tetraphase posted its first batch of pivotal trial data, and sales were nowhere near where they needed to be in order for the company to keep its head above water.

Lonza chairman Albert Baehny took his time headhunting a new CEO for the company, making it absolutely clear he wanted a Big Pharma or biotech CEO with a good long track record in the business for the top spot. In the end, he went with the gold standard, turning to Roche’s ranks to recruit Pierre-Alain Ruffieux for the job.

Ruffieux, a member of the pharma leadership team at Roche, spent close to 5 years at the company. But like a small army of manufacturing execs, he gained much of his experience at the other Big Pharma in Basel, remaining at Novartis for 12 years before expanding his horizons.

Another Big Pharma is entering the Covid-19 antibody hunt.

AbbVie has announced a collaboration with the Netherlands’ Utrecht University and Erasmus Medical Center and the Chinese-Dutch biotech Harbour Biomed to develop a neutralizing antibody that can treat Covid-19. The antibody, called 47D11, was discovered by AbbVie’s three partners, and AbbVie will support early preclinical work, while preparing for later preclinical and clinical development. Researchers described the antibody in Nature Communications last month.

Before remdesivir soaked up the spotlight amid the coronavirus crisis, Gilead’s filgotinib was the star experimental drug tapped to rake in billions competing with other JAK inhibitors made by rivals including AbbVie and Eli Lilly.

Now, long term data on the drug — discovered by Gilead’s partners at Galapagos and posted as part of a virtual medical conference — have solidified the durability and safety of filgotinib in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, spanning data from three late-stage trials. An FDA decision on the drug is expected this year.

→ Merck — one of the last big pharma bastions in the beleaguered field of antibiotic drug development — on Friday said the FDA had signed off on using its combination drug, Recarbrio, with hospital-acquired bacterial pneumonia and ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia. The drug could come handy for use in hospitalized patients who are afflicted with Covid-19, who carry a higher risk of contracting secondary bacterial infections. Once SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind Covid-19, infects the airways, it engages the immune system, giving other pathogens free rein to pillage and plunder as they please — the issue is particularly pertinent in patients on ventilators, which in any case are breeding grounds for infectious bacteria.