When the FDA ap­proved Blue­print’s first drug three months ago, they split their de­ci­sion. Ay­vak­it would be ap­proved for gas­troin­testi­nal stro­mal tu­mors (GIST) with a rare mu­ta­tion called PDGFRa. The oth­er half of their ap­pli­ca­tion for plain old fourth line GIST would have to wait. Reg­u­la­tors want­ed to know how the drug per­formed in a Phase III tri­al.

Re­sults are now in from that Phase III tri­al and they spelled a death-knell. In a study of 476 pa­tients with third or fourth line GIST, Ay­vak­it (avapri­tinib) per­formed worse on the pri­ma­ry end­point than the al­ready-ap­proved Bay­er GIST drug, re­go­rafenib. Pro­gres­sion-free sur­vival was 4.2 months, com­pared with 5.6 months for Ay­vak­it.

Jeff Al­bers

Blue­print’s drug did have a high­er re­sponse rate — 17% com­pared with 7% — but that ap­peared as lit­tle con­so­la­tion. The com­pa­ny is dis­con­tin­u­ing de­vel­op­ment of the drug for those pa­tients.

“We will con­tin­ue to ad­vance our pipeline with clear near-term pri­or­i­ties in sys­temic mas­to­cy­to­sis and RET-al­tered can­cers,” CEO Jeff Al­bers said in a state­ment.

The com­pa­ny’s stock $BPMC took a sig­nif­i­cant hit, falling 20% from $70.90 to $56.71, ef­fec­tive­ly eras­ing over $800 mil­lion in val­ue.

Cowen’s Marc Frahm sug­gest­ed, though, that this was an over­re­ac­tion, writ­ing in a note to in­vestors that “GIST was not the the­sis.” The drug could still be po­ten­tial­ly used off-la­bel in fourth line GIST, Frahm wrote, but they were still re­mov­ing 3rd and 4th line GIST from their fu­ture sales pro­jec­tions. Nev­er­the­less, he ar­gued the tri­al said lit­tle about Ay­vak­it’s po­ten­tial in sys­temic mas­to­cy­to­sis — a rare dis­ease where mast cells ac­cu­mu­late in or­gans — or, in com­bi­na­tion with an­oth­er ex­per­i­men­tal drug, in can­cers with RET mu­ta­tions.

“We have re­moved sales for the broad 3/4L GIST in­di­ca­tions but con­tin­ue to view BPMC shares as un­der­val­ued,” Frahm wrote, pric­ing them at $83.

An­drew Berens at SVB Leerink was less up­beat but echoed the call for cau­tion. The fail­ure will “fun­da­men­tal­ly hit” Blue­print, he said, but the greater po­ten­tial lay else­where.

“Over­all, we be­lieve that GIST is less im­por­tant to the BPMC the­sis and think that in­vestors are like­ly to step in af­ter this read­out for more long-term op­por­tu­ni­ties in RET-dri­ven ma­lig­nan­cies and sys­temic mas­to­cy­to­sis (SM) with up­com­ing cat­a­lyst,” Berens wrote.

Blue­print had been in a two-per­son race with De­ci­phera to get a drug ap­proved for GIST — a rare form of sar­co­ma in the di­ges­tive sys­tem — dri­ven by a mu­ta­tion to the platelet-de­rived growth al­pha gene, or PDGFRa. Ay­vak­it was ap­proved un­der ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval, while De­ci­phera awaits an Au­gust de­ci­sion date from the FDA. Both com­pa­nies are al­so pur­su­ing sys­temic mas­to­cy­to­sis and 2nd line GIST.

De­ci­phera does not have a tri­al for 3rd line GIST, but Berens said the com­pa­ny could ben­e­fit if on­col­o­gists de­cide to try their drug off-la­bel in that set­ting.

So­cial im­age: Jeff Al­bers, Blue­print CEO (CN­BC)

New data from HHS show that more than 162,000 courses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 antiviral Paxlovid were administered across the US over the past week, continuing a streak of increased usage of the pill, and signaling not only rising case numbers but more awareness of how to access it.

In comparison to this week, about 670,000 courses of the Pfizer pill have been administered across the first five months since Paxlovid has been on the US market, averaging about 33,000 courses administered per week in that time.

The FDA is offering more of an explanation of the guardrails around its program that may soon allow states to import prescription drugs in some select circumstances from Canada, but only if such imports will result in significant cost reductions for consumers.

While the agency has yet to sign off on any of the 5 state plans in the works so far, and PhRMA’s suit to block the Trump-era rule allowing such imports is stalled, the new Q&A guidance spells out the various restrictions that states will have to abide by, potentially signaling that a state approval is coming.

Leading the way to increase access to cheaper drugs worldwide, Pfizer said Wednesday it will provide all current and future patent-protected medicines and vaccines available in the US or EU on a not-for-profit basis to about 1.2 billion people in 45 lower-income countries.

Rwanda, Ghana, Malawi, Senegal and Uganda are the first five countries to sign on to this accord, which will also seek to blaze new paths for quick and efficient regulatory and procurement processes to reduce the usual delays in making new medicines and vaccines available in these countries.