Bio­Marin isn’t go­ing to let a ri­val’s suc­cess over the week­end get in the way of mak­ing a bee-line to the FDA with an im­per­fect, but pre­sentable, gene ther­a­py for he­mo­phil­ia A.

On Mon­day the biotech $BM­RN re­port­ed that its talks with the FDA and the EMA con­vinced ex­ecs to make a leap for an ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval with da­ta on just a hand­ful of pa­tients. And they’re hand­ing over Phase I/II and in­ter­im Phase III re­sults in Q4 to make their case.

That de­ci­sion was made de­spite a con­sid­er­able back­lash against the lat­est snap­shot of the da­ta, with wors­en­ing ef­fi­ca­cy over time and a low­er ini­tial re­sponse in their piv­otal tri­al — but ex­cel­lent bleed rates, so far. Bio­Marin says that with a break­through drug des­ig­na­tion in the USA and Eu­rope’s prime sta­tus, they have good rea­son to be­lieve they are on track to field the world’s first gene ther­a­py.

In­vestors ap­pear some­what skep­ti­cal though, with Bio­Marin shares down 2.4% in Mon­day af­ter­noon trad­ing.

Here’s the bet they’re mak­ing, out­lined in their lat­est state­ment:

Fac­tor VI­II lev­els sus­tained over a three-year pe­ri­od were suf­fi­cient to achieve strik­ing he­mo­sta­t­ic ef­fi­ca­cy. Fac­tor VI­II ex­pres­sion has en­tered a plateau phase where the rate of de­cline has sub­stan­tial­ly slowed, which could be in­dica­tive of durable, long-term ex­pres­sion.

Leerink’s Joseph Schwartz of­fers a bull­ish as­sess­ment of Bio­Marin’s gam­ble:

Based on BM­RN’s Ph.3 da­ta, the com­pa­ny met their pre-spec­i­fied cri­te­ria for ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval – 8 pts achiev­ing mean fac­tor VI­II/FVI­II lev­els above 40 IU/dL. With on­ly 17 pts (out of 20 pts) eval­u­at­ed so far, it is pos­si­ble that the re­main­ing 3 could pro­vide more con­fi­dence in Val­rox al­though it is not re­quired for ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval since BM­RN has al­ready met the bar. The com­pa­ny is fo­cused on get­ting Val­rox to mar­ket as soon as pos­si­ble by sub­mit­ting their fil­ing in 4Q19 based on their Ph.3 in­ter­im analy­sis and aims to com­plete GEN­Er8-1 (6E13 vg/kg) en­roll­ment in ear­ly fall 2019. As­sum­ing BM­RN could in­crease and op­ti­mize ef­fi­ca­cy — re­call, chro­mogenic mea­sures were high­er in Ph.1/2 at weeks 23-26 than Ph.3 (68 IU/dL mean/57 IU/dL me­di­an in Ph.1/2 vs 36 IU/dL mean/33 IU/dL me­di­an Ph.3) — we be­lieve that po­ten­tial stud­ies BM­RN may con­duct lat­er could fur­ther boost sales and in­crease Val­rox’s at­trac­tive­ness among he­mo­phil­ia A pts, es­pe­cial­ly as com­pet­ing pro­grams (i.e., SG­MO/PFE) ap­pear to be de­liv­er­ing com­pet­i­tive ef­fi­ca­cy.

Spark Ther­a­peu­tics $ONCE is wide­ly viewed as the run­ner up for now, while Roche strug­gles to com­plete its $4.3 bil­lion buy­out as soon as pos­si­ble. But Sang­amo/Pfiz­er gar­nered some care­ful sec­ond looks a few days ago as they post­ed bet­ter ef­fi­ca­cy and a fast re­sponse among 4 evalu­able pa­tients. That team al­so out­lined plans to make a leap for­ward on an ac­cel­er­at­ed path­way as they sought to catch up with the two fron­trun­ners.

Any stum­ble at this point could prove a set­back, but if they stay on track Sang­amo and Pfiz­er may set up a sit­u­a­tion where pa­tients can choose an im­per­fect gene ther­a­py or wait for a bet­ter one. And Bio­Marin has out­lined plans to charge in the range of $2 mil­lion to $3 mil­lion per treat­ment — with the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of earn­ing $10 bil­lion to $15 bil­lion a year — adding stick­er shock for pay­ers to the list of chal­lenges.

An increase in demand of up to 79% for clinical trials in China has prompted Novotech the Asia-Pacific CRO to rapidly expand the China team, appointing expert local clinical executives to their Shanghai and Hong Kong offices. The company is planning to expand their team by 30% over the next quarter.

Novotech China has seen considerable demand recently which is borne out by research from GlobalData:
A global migration of clinical research is occurring from high-income countries to low and middle-income countries with emerging economies. Over the period 2017 to 2018, for example, the number of clinical trial sites opened by biotech companies in Asia-Pacific increased by 35% compared to 8% in the rest of the world, with growth as high as 79% in China.
Novotech CEO Dr John Moller said China offers the largest population in the world, rapid economic growth, and an increasing willingness by government to invest in research and development.
Novotech’s 23 years of experience working in the region means we are the ideal CRO partner for USA biotechs wanting to tap the research expertise and opportunities that China offers.
There are over 22,000 active investigators in Greater China, with about 5,000 investigators with experience on at least 3 studies (source GlobalData).

From PD-1 targeting to the RAS pathway to the STING complex, Thomas Gajewski has spent the past two decades of his career decoding the various ways the immune system can be unleashed to defend against cancer. So when the University of Chicago professor comes around to putting all his findings into a new platform for finding new targets, VCs and pharma groups alike pay attention.

“He’s been studying T cells for 20 years, plus he’s one of the world’s leaders if not the world leader in the space,” David Steinberg, partner at Longwood Fund, said. “Furthermore, let me add he did a lot of the foundational research and also some of the seminal clinical trials in the existing set of I/O agents. He understands the space really well, he understands the current strengths, and I think he understood really well what was missing, so he knew where to look.”

Earlier this week we got a look at Senator Kamala Harris’ position on drug prices. She’s proposing that HHS take an average price from single-payer systems like the UK, Germany and Canada — which leverage market access for lower prices — and use that to set the US price. Anything drug companies collect above that would be taxed at a rate of 100%.

And the rhetoric is scathing:
While families struggle to make it to the end of the month, pharmaceutical companies are turning record profits. They’re spending nearly as much on advertising as R&D. They’re manipulating their market power to hike prices on lifesaving generic drugs. They’re making twice the profit of the average industry in America and still increased drug prices by 10.5% over the past six months alone. Meanwhile, they are charging dramatically higher prices to American consumers.
That’s an escalation on Joe Biden’s plan, which includes drug importation from those cheaper markets as well as allowing Medicare to negotiate prices — something that virtually all Dems agree on now.