Catch­ing up in mul­ti­ple myelo­ma, Pfiz­er taps ORIC for BC­MA com­bo study

Pfiz­er has found a Phase II can­di­date that it be­lieves would pair well with its ex­per­i­men­tal BC­MA drug, and it’s in­fus­ing $25 mil­lion in­to the biotech be­hind the ther­a­py.

As part of a new clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment col­lab­o­ra­tion, Pfiz­er will test el­ranatam­ab, a BC­MA CD3-tar­get­ed bis­pe­cif­ic, in com­bi­na­tion with ORIC Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ ORIC-533, a small mol­e­cule in­hibitor of CD73.

ORIC is sell­ing shares to Pfiz­er at a pre­mi­um, but the price of $4.65 per share is still less than half of where it start­ed the year. Co-found­ed by in­ven­tors of Xtan­di and Er­lea­da, the South San Fran­cis­co biotech’s stat­ed mis­sion is to tack­le re­sis­tance to can­cer drugs. But its ini­tial lead pro­gram flunked ear­ly stud­ies in prostate can­cer, tank­ing shares and lead­ing to its ter­mi­na­tion.

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