John Damonti, Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation president (BMS)

Bris­tol My­ers Squibb Foun­da­tion launch­es pro­gram to tack­le di­ver­si­ty prob­lem in clin­i­cal tri­als

Over the last sev­er­al months, the pan­dem­ic has am­pli­fied calls for more di­verse clin­i­cal tri­als.

While mi­nor­i­ty pop­u­la­tions are con­tract­ing Covid-19 at high­er rates than white Amer­i­cans, they are no­tably un­der­rep­re­sent­ed in clin­i­cal tri­als. Black Amer­i­cans make up 13% of the US pop­u­la­tion, but on­ly 7% of par­tic­i­pants in clin­i­cal tri­als, ac­cord­ing to the FDA. And they’re be­ing in­fect­ed with Covid-19 at a 2.6 times high­er rate than white Amer­i­cans.

“The im­por­tance of di­ver­si­ty in the clin­i­cal tri­als for the vac­cines is just an­oth­er spot­light on an is­sue that’s been go­ing on for decades,” John Da­mon­ti, pres­i­dent of the Bris­tol My­ers Squibb Foun­da­tion, told End­points News. 

On Tues­day, the foun­da­tion launched a new pro­gram with the non­prof­it or­ga­ni­za­tion Na­tion­al Med­ical Fel­low­ships and backed it with $100 mil­lion to help clin­i­cal tri­als reach un­der­served pop­u­la­tions. The pro­gram con­sists of three parts: a train­ing com­po­nent for 250 new clin­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tors, fel­low­ships for 250 mi­nor­i­ty med­ical stu­dents, and an in­fra­struc­ture fund to help in­ves­ti­ga­tors build new clin­i­cal tri­al sites.

The new sites, he said, would ide­al­ly go “in clin­i­cal tri­al deserts where … the dis­ease bur­den is high but clin­i­cal tri­als don’t ex­ist in those sites, or even look to build­ing out in ur­ban cen­ters through safe­ty net hos­pi­tals and oth­ers.”

Prin­ci­pal in­ves­ti­ga­tors will men­tor the new clin­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tors who will men­tor the med­ical stu­dents, who will work in fed­er­al­ly qual­i­fied health cen­ters, safe­ty net hos­pi­tals and oth­er med­ical cen­ters in their com­mu­ni­ties.

“At the end of the day, even if you have 250 di­verse clin­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tors, if they’re not ac­tive­ly work­ing in the com­mu­ni­ties to build those re­la­tion­ships and build that trust, the pro­gram will not be as suc­cess­ful as it po­ten­tial­ly could be,” Da­mon­ti said.

The mon­ey comes from a $300 mil­lion com­mit­ment that Bris­tol My­ers Squibb and its foun­da­tion made back in Au­gust for health eq­ui­ty, di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion ef­forts. Na­tion­al Med­ical Fel­low­ships will help with im­ple­men­ta­tion, such as man­ag­ing com­po­nents of the ap­pli­ca­tion process and an in­de­pen­dent ad­vi­so­ry board.

Ap­pli­ca­tions will open in Jan­u­ary for clin­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tors, and Da­mon­ti ex­pects the first class to be­gin some­time in Sep­tem­ber.

“While the pa­tient re­sponse to med­ical ther­a­pies may dif­fer across racial and eth­nic sub­groups, clin­i­cal tri­als of­ten fail to rep­re­sent the de­mo­graph­ic di­ver­si­ty of the pop­u­la­tions that these prod­ucts aim to serve,” said Robert Winn, di­rec­tor of the Vir­ginia Com­mon­wealth Uni­ver­si­ty Massey Can­cer Cen­ter and chair of the na­tion­al ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee of the Bris­tol My­ers Squibb Foun­da­tion’s new pro­gram.

Black Amer­i­cans made up 20% of par­tic­i­pants in the NI­AID-fund­ed ACTT-1 tri­al of remde­sivir, ac­cord­ing to a New Eng­land Jour­nal of Med­i­cine piece. And Lat­inx and Na­tive Amer­i­cans, who are at a 2.8 times high­er risk of in­fec­tion than white Amer­i­cans, made up 23% and 0.7% of the ACTT-1 par­tic­i­pants, re­spec­tive­ly.

The is­sue isn’t unique to the pan­dem­ic. Out of 230 tri­als lead­ing to FDA on­col­o­gy OKs in the last decade or so, Black and Lat­inx par­tic­i­pants were “un­der­rep­re­sent­ed… rel­a­tive to their pro­por­tion among the US can­cer pop­u­la­tion,” ac­cord­ing to a piece pub­lished in JA­MA last year.

“The re­al out­come, and the im­pact of this pro­gram is go­ing to be mea­sured by the role that these in­di­vid­u­als can play in terms of at­tract­ing di­verse pa­tient pop­u­la­tions in­to clin­i­cal tri­als. That’s what this pro­gram has been cre­at­ed to do,” Da­mon­ti said. “We just want to make sure that the end of the day it’s the pa­tient that gets in­to the tri­al.”

A pre­vi­ous ver­sion of this ar­ti­cle stat­ed that the Bris­tol My­ers Squibb Foun­da­tion made a $300 mil­lion com­mit­ment in Au­gust for health eq­ui­ty ef­forts. The piece has been up­dat­ed to clar­i­fy that the biotech al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in the com­mit­ment.

Has the mo­ment fi­nal­ly ar­rived for val­ue-based health­care?

RBC Capital Markets’ Healthcare Technology Analyst, Sean Dodge, spotlights a new breed of tech-enabled providers who are rapidly transforming the way clinicians deliver healthcare, and explores the key question: can this accelerating revolution overturn the US healthcare system?

Key points

Tech-enabled healthcare providers are poised to help the US transition to value, not volume, as the basis for reward.
The move to value-based care has policy momentum, but is risky and complex for clinicians.
Outsourced tech specialists are emerging to provide the required expertise, while healthcare and tech are also converging through M&A.
Value-based care remains in its early stages, but the transition is accelerating and represents a huge addressable market.

Alaa Halawaa, executive director at Mubadala’s US venture group

The ven­ture crew at Mubadala are up­ping their biotech cre­ation game, tak­ing care­ful aim at a new fron­tier in drug de­vel­op­ment

It started with a cup of coffee and a slow burning desire to go early and long in the biotech creation business.

Wrapping up a 15-year discovery stint at Genentech back in the summer of 2021, Rami Hannoush was treated to a caffeine-fueled review of the latest work UCSF’s Jim Wells had been doing on protein degradation — one of the hottest fields in drug development.

“Jim and I have known each other for the past 15 years through Genentech collaborations. We met over coffee, and he was telling me about this concept of the company that he was thinking of,” says Hannoush. “And I got immediately intrigued by it because I knew that this could open up a big space in terms of adding a new modality in drug discovery that is desperately needed in pharma.”

Endpoints Premium

Premium subscription required

Unlock this article along with other benefits by subscribing to one of our paid plans.

Rohan Palekar, 89bio CEO

89bio’s PhII da­ta add to quick suc­ces­sion of NASH read­outs as field seeks turn­around

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.

FDA in­di­cates will­ing­ness to ap­prove Bio­gen ALS drug de­spite failed PhI­II study

Ahead of Wednesday’s advisory committee hearing to discuss Biogen’s ALS drug tofersen, the FDA appeared open to approving the drug, newly released briefing documents show.

Citing the need for flexibility in a devastating disease like ALS, regulators signaled a willingness to consider greenlighting tofersen based on its effect on a certain protein associated with ALS despite a failed pivotal trial. The documents come after regulatory flexibility was part of the same rationale the agency expressed when approving an ALS drug last September from Amylyx Pharmaceuticals, indicating the FDA’s openness to approving new treatments for the disease.

Endpoints News

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 163,300+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

Roche and Lil­ly team up to de­vel­op blood test to de­tect ear­ly signs of Alzheimer's

Eli Lilly is teaming up with Roche to help develop a blood test to detect early signs of Alzheimer’s disease and determine whether a patient should go for further confirmatory testing.

Roche’s Elecsys Amyloid Plasma Panel (EAPP) measures pTau 181 protein assay and APOE E4 assay in human blood plasma – elevations in pTau 181 are present in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, while the presence of APO E4 is the most common genetic risk factor for the disease.

Endpoints News

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 163,300+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

Flare Therapeutics biochemists Yong Li (L) and Valerie Vivat

A $123M Flare will get Third Rock on­col­o­gy biotech in­to the clin­ic this year

Flare Therapeutics will start its first human trial this year with an investigational urothelial cancer drug after pulling together a $123 million Series B from Big Pharmas, VCs and its incubator, Third Rock Ventures.

Launched in 2021 on the idea that a biotech could finally succeed at drugging the much-sought-after but stubborn transcription factor, Flare Therapeutics said Wednesday it is now primed for the clinic after closing its large financing haul earlier this year. The raise is a relatively stark figure in a tough startup financing environment but further buoys the upbeat signals coming out of other Third Rock biotechs in recent weeks, including the $200 million CARGO Therapeutics and $100 million Rapport Therapeutics rounds.

Endpoints News

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 163,300+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

Francesco Marincola, newly-appointed Sonata Therapeutics CSO

Kite's head of re­search leaves for Flag­ship start­up Sonata

Another leader is departing Kite Pharma, and will to spend the “last part” of his career exploring how cancer evades the immune system.

Kite’s senior VP and global head of cell therapy research Francesco Marincola left the Gilead CAR-T unit last week for Sonata Therapeutics. Flagship last May unveiled the startup, which was pieced together from two fledgling biotechs Inzen and Cygnal Therapeutics. As CSO, Marincola will lead Sonata’s push to reprogram cancer cells to make them more immunogenic.

Endpoints News

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 163,300+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

NIH re­jects an­oth­er at­tempt to 'march-in' on Astel­las' prostate can­cer drug over ex­ces­sive price

The National Institutes of Health has again declined to use so-called “march-in” rights to lower the price of Astellas and Pfizer’s prostate cancer drug Xtandi despite being invented at UCLA with grants from the US Army and NIH.

“Given the remaining patent life and the lengthy administrative process involved for a march-in proceeding, NIH does not believe that use of the march-in authority would be an effective means of lowering the price of the drug,” NIH told prostate cancer patients Robert Sachs and Clare Love, in a letter shared with Endpoints News. The institutes’ analyses found Xtandi “to be widely available to the public,” an indication that there was not a pressing need for the US to act.

No­vo Nordisk re­mains un­der UK scruti­ny as MHRA con­ducts its own re­view in 'in­cred­i­bly rare' case

The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency is now reviewing Novo Nordisk’s marketing violation that resulted in its loss of UK trade group membership last week. Novo Nordisk was suspended on Thursday from the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) for two years after an investigation by its regulatory arm found the pharma broke its conduct rules.

MHRA said on Tuesday that its review of the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA) investigation is standard practice. An MHRA spokesperson emphasized in an email to Endpoints News that the situation with Novo Nordisk is “incredibly rare” while also noting ABPI took “swift and proportionate action.”

Endpoints News

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 163,300+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.