Incyte is rolling out more mid-stage data for its next-gen oral JAK inhibitor, this time in an indication where it’s recently scored an approval with another drug.

Over the weekend at the 2023 American Academy of Dermatology Annual Meeting, the company spelled out results from a Phase IIb trial of povorcitinib among patients with extensive nonsegmental vitiligo, a condition where people’s skin loses color. In the study, the once-daily pill helped more patients than placebo regain color on their skin, as measured by a score of depigmentation called T-VASI (total Vitiligo Area Scoring Index).

A neuroblastoma patient has died after receiving Athenex’s natural killer cell therapy, triggering a clinical hold, the company revealed.

Baylor College of Medicine, which is running the trial, has identified some of the conditions leading up to the patient’s death and is “devising a safety risk mitigation plan” to reopen the trial, according to Athenex. It did not return requests for comment on when the patient’s death occurred.

Four years after first entering a collaboration with Nurix, Gilead is ponying up an option exercise payment of $20 million to license targeted protein degrader GS-6791.

It’s the first candidate to come from the agreement, with the potential for $425 million in milestone payments and low double-digit tiered royalties on product net sales.

GS-6791 is an oral IRAK4 degrader that targets inflammatory responses. Degrading IRAK4 could lead to potential treatments in rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory diseases, according to a press release.

Zymeworks and Daiichi Sankyo ended a seven-year collaboration on bispecific antibodies last week.

Under the 2016 agreement, Zymeworks licensed its Azymetric and Efect platforms to Daiichi Sankyo to develop one bispecific antibody therapy in exchange for technology access fees and milestone payments and royalties, according to SEC filings. But Zymeworks also got something else in return, in the form of licenses to certain immuno-oncology antibodies from Daiichi.

Gossamer Bio is stopping enrollment on a Phase Ib/II trial of its BTK inhibitor in CNS lymphoma, it said in its annual report Friday morning.

The San Diego-based biotech said, “​​Based upon the benefit / risk profile observed to date and a prioritization of resources to support the seralutinib program,” it decided to stop enrolling the trial of the BTK inhibitor known as GB5121. Next, Gossamer plans to discuss the available data with the trial’s data review committee, an independent panel of experts, to figure out next steps. The trial originally expected to enroll around 160 patients, according to a federal clinical trials database.

Pfizer and Astellas are gunning to add a fourth indication to their cancer drug Xtandi with Phase III trial results released today.

The study, looking at Xtandi plus leuprolide and Xtandi as a monotherapy in men with non-metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, met its primary endpoint with a “statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement” in metastasis-free survival in the patients treated with Xtandi plus leuprolide, according to the companies, though no detailed data was given.