The last I had heard about Sean Bohen, he had stepped out of his high-profile job as chief medical officer at AstraZeneca at the beginning of 2019 as CEO Pascal Soriot triggered a ...
So Covid-19 leader BioNTech has a cancer vaccine in development? Yes, and Regeneron just jumped in for the PhII combo study
Before the coronavirus global emergency stole the R&D show in biopharma, the leaders in the race to develop new mRNA therapies had a big interest in determining if their tech could be used to create an effective cancer vaccine after all the first-gen tries had failed to impress. So perhaps it’s not surprising that an early cut of the data at frontrunner BioNTech went largely unnoticed.
Unless you were at Regeneron.
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President Trump speaks during an event to sign executive orders on lowering drug prices, July 24, 2020 (Alex Brandon/AP Images)
Trump’s ‘radical’, ‘horrible’ executive orders on drug pricing earn a C-suite backlash this week — with one threat to do more overseas
Once the pandemic erupted in the US, Big Pharma enjoyed a brief period of detente — if not actually warm relations — with the Trump administration.
After years of criticizing high drug prices and threatening legislation that would curb the industry’s pricing freedom, the president warmly encouraged the industry’s commitment to a pell mell race to new vaccines and drugs to fight Covid-19 — often at speeds that would have been considered impossible back in January. And it raised the possibility that biopharma could finally find a way to achieve some kind of popularity after years of public toxicity.
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Rick Gonzalez, AbbVie CEO (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Images)
The pharma world's champion patent wall builder is called out for their 'drip-feed' strategy to safeguard the next megablockbuster franchise
By all accounts, AbbVie holds the title as a master builder of patent walls. Its work on Humira has been both legendary and extraordinarily controversial, encircling a cash cow that can be milked without any generic rivals butting in until 2023 — as new and better drugs come along to outperform the copycats to come.
And now a group of patient advocates at I-MAK say AbbVie is deep into building its second high security patent perimeter around Imbruvica — the next Humira in the AbbVie portfolio.
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Antibody legend Tillman Gerngross is elbowing his way into the Covid-19 R&D crusade: 'I don’t see this ending anytime soon'
One of the most influential — and outspoken — scientists at work in the field of antibody discovery is jumping into the frenzied race to create new therapeutics to treat and prevent Covid-19. And he’s operating with the conviction that the current outbreak now once again spreading like wildfire will create plenty of demand for what he has in mind.
Dartmouth professor and Adimab CEO Tillman Gerngross tells me he’s raised $50 million from a group of close VCs to spin out a new company — Adagio Therapeutics — with a full C-suite team assembled to hire up a staff and keep rolling toward the clinic.
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A neoantigen pioneer says its tech is working great. So what wrecked the share price?
Gritstone Oncology was one of the original neoantigen upstarts, raising cash and planning to disrupt the immuno-oncology field with a bold new approach to fighting cancer with a new brand of vaccines.
On Monday, the crew in charge ran out a full display of what they’ve been seeing in a Phase I study. And everything seems to be working perfectly with one big exception: It didn’t significantly shrink tumors, let alone eradicate them.
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Stéphane Bancel, Moderna CEO (Andrew Harnik/AP Images)
July 13, 2020 09:28 AM EDTUpdated July 14, 04:12 AM
A top analyst turns the spotlight on Moderna, fueling a fast-and-furious Street race over the future of mRNA
Bioregnum Opinion Column by John Carroll
Four months ago, one of the favorite talking points on the biopharma social media wave length was whether Moderna shares $MRNA were priced right or were wildly inflated.
After all, said the naysayers, the company had never actually pushed a treatment to an approval. Did messenger RNA really work, coding cells to make a drug or a vaccine? And how about all that chatter about how ‘secretive’ they are, or were?
Now, as CEO Stéphane Bancel and the top execs push the company to the forefront of a frantic race to develop the first vaccine to fight against the reignited wildfire spread of Covid-19, all those questions have been magnified — along with the stock price.
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Hal Barron, GSK
July 10, 2020 09:40 AM EDTUpdated July 13, 04:20 AM
Win or lose on the marketing OK, the FDA just gunned down GSK’s bright hopes for their BCMA therapy
The FDA’s ODAC — the Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee — has a well-known bias in favor of adding new cancer drugs to the market, even if efficacy is at best marginal and serious safety issues demand careful management.
Doctors want as many arrows in their quiver as they can get. And when patients are dying after failing multiple drugs, why not give it a go one more time?
GlaxoSmithKline, though, is about to test out how their new BCMA antibody drug conjugate belantamab mafodotin can do after being mauled in an in-house FDA review, ahead of the Tuesday expert panel discussion. Even if the agency goes ahead with an expected green light, this drug will likely be constrained to a small niche — icing any plans they may have for making waves in oncology anytime soon.
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The home run count: The $100M+ mega-round boom in biotech inspired a $7.3B feeding frenzy — so far this year
Over the last 6 months there’s been a blizzard of money piling up drifts of the green stuff through the biotech landscape. And the forecast calls for more cash windfalls ahead.
Even as a global pandemic has killed more than half a million people, blighted economies and divided nations over the proper response, it’s also helped ignite an unprecedented burst of big-time investing. And not just in Covid-19 deals, as we’ve looked at before.
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A new study points to $6.5B in public support building the scientific foundation of Gilead's remdesivir. Should that be reflected in the price?
By drug R&D standards, Gilead’s move to repurpose remdesivir for Covid-19 and grab an emergency use authorization was a remarkably easy, low-cost layup that required modest efficacy and a clean safety profile from just a small group of patients.
The drug OK also arrived after Gilead had paid much of the freight on getting it positioned to move fast.
In a study by Fred Ledley, director of the Center for Integration of Science and Industry at Bentley University in Waltham, MA, researchers concluded that the NIH had invested only $46.5 million in the research devoted to the drug ahead of the pandemic, a small sum compared to the more than $1 billion Gilead expected to spend getting it out this year, all on top of what it had already cost in R&D expenses.
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Donald and Melania Trump watch the smoke of fireworks from the South Lawn of the White House on July 4, 2020 (via Getty)
Which drug developers offer Trump a quick, game-changing ‘solution’ as the pandemic roars back? Eli Lilly and AbCellera look to break out of the pack
We are unleashing our nation’s scientific brilliance and will likely have a therapeutic and/or vaccine solution long before the end of the year.
— Donald Trump, July 4
Next week administration officials plan to promote a new study they say shows promising results on therapeutics, the officials said. They wouldn’t describe the study in any further detail because, they said, its disclosure would be “market-moving.”
— NBC News, July 3
Something’s cooking. And it’s not just July 4 leftovers involving stale buns and uneaten hot dogs.
Over the long weekend observers picked up signs that the focus in the Trump administration may swiftly shift from the bright spotlight on vaccines being promised this fall, around the time of the election, to include drugs that could possibly keep patients out of the hospital and take the political sting out of the soaring Covid-19 numbers causing embarrassment in states that swiftly reopened — as Trump cheered along.
So far, Gilead has been the chief beneficiary of the drive on drugs, swiftly offering enough early data to get remdesivir an emergency authorization and into the hands of the US government. But their drug, while helpful in cutting stays, is known for a limited, modest effect. And that won’t tamp down on the hurricane of criticism that’s been tearing at the White House, and buffeting the president’s most stalwart core defenders as the economy suffers.
We’ve had positive early-stage vaccine data, most recently from Pfizer and BioNTech, playing catchup on an mRNA race led by Moderna — where every little sign of potential trouble is magnified into a lethal threat, just as every advance excites a frenzy of support. But that race still has months to play out, with more Phase I data due ahead of the mid-stage numbers looming ahead. A vaccine may not be available in large enough quantities until well into 2021, which is still wildly ambitious.
So what about a drug solution?
Trump’s initial support for a panacea focused on hydroxychloroquine. But that fizzled in the face of data underscoring its ineffectiveness — killing trials that aren’t likely to be restarted because of a recent population-based study offering some support. And there are a number of existing drugs being repurposed to see how they help hospitalized patients.
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