If there’s one un­der­ly­ing les­son I’ve learned watch­ing bio­phar­ma in ac­tion over the past 20 years or so, it’s that no R&D or­ga­ni­za­tion can rest on its lau­rels. Es­pe­cial­ly the larg­er ones. You’ve had a big suc­cess? Great. Now how do you plan to fol­low up on that? And how soon? Hit by fail­ure? What’s Plan B, C, D and E?

Lars Fruer­gaard Jør­gensen

And that’s the cen­tral mes­sage of my up­com­ing Eu­ro­pean Bio­phar­ma Sum­mit com­ing up next week. I’ll be talk­ing to 5 top bio­phar­ma ex­ec­u­tives about their next-gen game plans.

— No­vo Nordisk CEO Lars Fruer­gaard Jør­gensen and I have had a lot to talk about. Semaglu­tide has been the kind of suc­cess sto­ry any com­pa­ny likes to tell, es­pe­cial­ly now that it looks to make block­buster re­turns in fight­ing obe­si­ty — one of the tough­est nuts to crack in drug R&D his­to­ry. But we know that al­ready. What hap­pens now in R&D? The com­pa­ny has some am­bi­tious plans for build­ing the pipeline, and a clear strat­e­gy for where it wants to head. And there are even more plans for semaglu­tide in R&D.

Su­san Gal­braith

— Su­san Gal­braith had a big role to fill when she took José Basel­ga’s job at As­traZeneca, fol­low­ing the top sci­en­tist’s trag­ic death. But com­ing from the trans­la­tion­al side of can­cer drug re­search, she’s top­ping a lengthy ca­reer in Big Phar­ma by fol­low­ing in­sights in­to the 2.0 gen­er­a­tion of can­cer drugs and com­bos. She has a lot to say, and I’m pay­ing close at­ten­tion. You should too.

John Tsai

— One of the key is­sues in any big de­vel­op­ment group is defin­ing risk. How do you em­brace the idea of a high-risk, high-re­ward pro­gram? For No­var­tis de­vel­op­ment chief John Tsai, that in­volves a “wild card” strat­e­gy we’ll be dis­cussing, where the phar­ma picks up a tough chal­lenge and goes in­to the clin­ic — know­ing that a win could de­liv­er a com­pa­ny-build­ing drug, but that suc­cess is far from se­cure. That’s one of sev­er­al things we’ll be talk­ing about No­var­tis’ de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy.

Jean-François Tou­s­saint

— Then there’s mR­NA. You don’t even need to ex­plain it any­more. What start­ed out with a hand­ful of star­tups a decade ago has be­come the New, New Thing in bio­phar­ma now that the tech has de­liv­ered the top 2 vac­cines be­ing used to fight a pan­dem­ic. Of course, there’s a lot — and I mean a lot — that still has to be done to prove the full po­ten­tial. And there are def­i­nite­ly no guar­an­tees. I’ll be talk­ing with Jean-François Tou­s­saint, the head of glob­al R&D at Sanofi Pas­teur, which is in­vest­ing heav­i­ly in the field, and Sean Marett, a top ex­ec at BioN­Tech.

Sean Marett

One of the most in­ter­est­ing star­tups in the in­dus­try has been Centes­sa, as­sem­bled by the start­up crew at Medicxi. David Grainger played a big role in that com­pa­ny, and now he’s tak­en on the task of chief deal­mak­er as they con­tin­ue to build up the pipeline. Grainger and End­points News pub­lish­er Ar­salan Arif will be ex­plor­ing that in a one-on-one ses­sion.

David Grainger

And fi­nal­ly, my co-host for this year’s event, Sil­i­con Val­ley Bank’s Nooman Haque, will be wrap­ping up with an­oth­er look at the Eu­ro­pean biotech fi­nance land­scape with 3 top play­ers: Alex Pas­teur at F-Prime, Juli­ette Au­det from For­bion and Thomas Burt at Sofinno­va. These have been boom times in the glob­al biotech busi­ness — how is that play­ing out in Eu­rope?

It’s a packed pro­gram. If you’re in­to R&D strat­e­gy, or you’re grow­ing your own com­pa­ny, I hope you’ll join us on Oct. 12. You can look over the sched­ule and sign up here — at no cost — by hit­ting the link.

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.

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.

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.

Sarepta Therapeutics has filed the data needed for an FDA accelerated approval, which would be the biotech’s fourth if granted by the agency.

The biotech has yet to complete confirmatory trials for those first three conditional nods. The filing for its fourth Duchenne muscular dystrophy treatment, disclosed Thursday, is not a surprise. Sarepta said in late-July it would do so after releasing positive results for the Roche-partnered gene therapy.