Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb has suf­fered an­oth­er painful set­back in its years-long quest to ex­pand the reach of Op­di­vo. The phar­ma gi­ant this morn­ing not­ed that their Check­mate-459 study com­par­ing Op­di­vo with Bay­er’s Nex­avar in front­line cas­es of he­pa­to­cel­lu­lar car­ci­no­ma — the most com­mon form of liv­er can­cer — failed to hit the pri­ma­ry end­point on over­all sur­vival.

This was a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in Bris­tol-My­ers’ tal­ly of PD-1 cat­a­lysts this year. Nex­avar (so­rafenib) has been the stan­dard of care in front­line HCC for the past decade, though Op­di­vo has been mak­ing head­way in sec­ond-line HCC cas­es, where it’s go­ing toe-to-toe with Bay­er’s Sti­var­ga (re­go­rafenib) af­ter re­cent ap­provals shook up the mar­ket.

The OS rate on Op­di­vo fell well short of sta­tis­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance, with a p val­ue of 0.0752. We’ll have to wait for an up­com­ing sci­ence con­fer­ence to get the full pic­ture.

Bris­tol-My­ers shares $BMY were down 4.5% ahead of the open­ing bell Mon­day as in­vestors re­act­ed to the news that the com­pa­ny is sell­ing Ote­zla to sat­is­fy reg­u­la­tors ahead of its big Cel­gene buy­out.

Re­searchers looked for a sil­ver lin­ing in the lat­est cut of the da­ta onOp­di­vo, say­ing “the re­sults showed a clear trend to­wards im­prove­ment in OS for pa­tients treat­ed with Op­di­vo com­pared to so­rafenib (Nex­avar), a cur­rent stan­dard of care.”

Bruno San­gro Clíni­ca Uni­ver­si­dad de Navar­ra

“We are en­cour­aged by the promis­ing ef­fi­ca­cy and safe­ty trends seen with Op­di­vo in Check­Mate-459, es­pe­cial­ly as HCC is a dev­as­tat­ing and dif­fi­cult-to-treat can­cer, for which there have been no sig­nif­i­cant ad­vances over so­rafenib, a stan­dard treat­ment, in more than a decade,” said Bruno San­gro, head of the liv­er unit, Clíni­ca Uni­ver­si­dad de Navar­ra, Pam­plona, Spain.

But an­a­lysts saw the down­side clear­ly. Vamil Di­van from Cred­it­Su­isse not­ed: “While the tri­al showed a trend to­wards an over­all sur­vival ben­e­fit, the lack of sta­tis­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance opens the door for com­peti­tors such as Mer­ck, Roche and As­tra to be­come the dom­i­nant play­er(s) in this in­di­ca­tion with the var­i­ous com­bi­na­tion tri­als they are cur­rent­ly run­ning.”

Michael Schmidt at SVB Leerink re­cent­ly not­ed:

In the US, Op­di­vo is gain­ing rapid mar­ket share in 2nd line HCC dri­ven by an ag­gres­sive mar­ket­ing ef­fort by BMY and mas­sive free sam­pling with some off-la­bel use not­ed in front-line pa­tients which is sup­port­ed by strong CM-040 re­sults. In Eu­rope, re­go­rafenib is ex­pect­ed to re­main the pre­ferred 2nd line agent in the near term, giv­en dif­fer­ences in treat­ment pat­tern and pref­er­ences.

Bris­tol-My­ers is by no means fin­ished here, with more re­sults ex­pect­ed on their com­bo with the CT­LA-4 Yer­voy. That match-up, though, has al­ready failed in small cell lung can­cer while in­ves­ti­ga­tors have had to deal with a strong push­back from the FDA in their quest to use high tu­mor mu­ta­tion­al bur­den de­f­i­n­i­tions to de­fine a new ap­proach to iden­ti­fy­ing lung can­cer pa­tients most like­ly to re­spond to Op­di­vo.

Mer­ck, mean­while, has fa­mous­ly pressed ahead in its suc­cess­ful dri­ve to gain the lead po­si­tion in the race to com­mand the PD-1 field. Both Keytru­da and Op­di­vo, though, are ex­pect­ed to re­main the two dom­i­nant drugs in their field for some time.

Gilead is mounting its counterfeit drug lawsuit, naming two “kingpins” and a complex network of conspirators who allegedly sold imitation bottles of its HIV meds, some of which ended up in US pharmacies.

The pharma giant on Wednesday provided an update on what it called a “large-scale, sophisticated counterfeiting conspiracy,” accusing two new defendants of “leading and orchestrating” a scheme to sell hundreds of millions of dollars in illegitimate drugs posing as meds such as Biktarvy and Descovy.

It was great getting back to a live ESMO conference/webinar in Paris followed by a live pop-up event for the Endpoints 11 in Boston. We’re staying on the road in October with our return for a live/streaming EUBIO22 in London.

Silicon Valley Bank’s Nooman Haque and I are once again jumping back into the thick of it with a slate of virtual and live events on October 12. I’ll get the ball rolling with a virtual fireside chat with Novo Nordisk R&D chief Marcus Schindler, covering their pipeline plans and BD work.

While it is not uncommon for a biotech to go down the route of having the product manufactured by a contract organization, one small biotech is looking to keep its card close to its chest.

Vor Biopharma has started manufacturing operations at an in-house facility at its HQ in Cambridge, MA after beginning construction last summer.

According to the biotech, the facility aims to develop Vor’s hematopoietic stem cells (eHSCs) and CAR-T therapies for patients with blood cancers. The site will initially manufacture a clinical supply of its candidate VCAR33allo to support its IND, which is slated to be submitted in the first half of next year. It also plans to transfer the production of VOR33 to the facility. Vor is getting to work quickly as engineering runs for VCAR33allo has started this week.

While colder temperatures are fast approaching, the situation surrounding the rise of energy prices in Europe is hitting businesses of every kind, including generic drug manufacturers.

Medicines for Europe, a group that represents the generic industry on the continent, sent a letter addressed to energy ministers and commissioners concerning inflation and the costs of energy on the supply of generic medicines.