Al­ny­lam shares crater af­ter tri­al deaths force in­ves­ti­ga­tors to scrap PhI­II RNAi drug

Late Wednes­day Al­ny­lam shocked its in­vestors with news that it has de­cid­ed to scrap re­vusir­an, its sec­ond most ad­vanced RNAi ther­a­py in the pipeline, due to a spike in the num­ber of deaths among pa­tients tak­ing the drug in a late-stage tri­al. All dos­ing has been stopped and won’t be re­sumed.

Shares in Al­ny­lam plunged 48% by late Thurs­day morn­ing, wip­ing out close to $3 bil­lion in mar­ket cap. Re­newed fears about the fate and fu­ture of RNAi al­so clawed back oth­er stocks, in­clud­ing ri­val Io­n­is $IONS, down 7%. The re­ac­tion dragged the Nas­daq biotech stock in­dex down 2%.

The drug was be­ing de­vel­oped for hered­i­tary AT­TR amy­loi­do­sis with car­diomy­opa­thy. But the biotech says that prob­lems with pe­riph­er­al neu­ropa­thy in an­oth­er study spurred the Cam­bridge, MA-based biotech to take a clos­er look at the Phase III da­ta it had been gath­er­ing.

Al­ny­lam in­ves­ti­ga­tors say that they did not find sol­id ev­i­dence of a drug-re­lat­ed neu­ropa­thy sig­nal. What they did find, af­ter un­blind­ing da­ta, was “an im­bal­ance of mor­tal­i­ty in the re­vusir­an arm as com­pared to place­bo.” And they don’t know why.

“This is drug de­vel­op­ment and these things do hap­pen,” not­ed CEO John Maraganore in a call with an­a­lysts, de­clin­ing to break down how many pa­tients died in each arm. A to­tal of 18 pa­tients died in the study — which en­rolled 206 pa­tients — and there was an im­bal­ance, he added, which elim­i­nat­ed any chance of demon­strat­ing a ben­e­fit over risk for the drug. This is a par­tic­u­lar­ly sick, old­er pop­u­la­tion of pa­tients, he said. And none of the deaths have been de­ter­mined to be drug re­lat­ed.

This news comes just days af­ter Al­ny­lam took a nasty hit on its stock price af­ter a much ear­li­er-stage drug, the RNAi liv­er dis­ease drug ALN-AAT, was scrapped af­ter three pa­tients ex­pe­ri­enced spik­ing liv­er en­zymes in a Phase I/II. That’s a clas­sic sign of pro­gram-killing tox­i­c­i­ty.

An­a­lysts didn’t like the sound of any of this, and a few start­ed draw­ing lines be­tween the Phase III set­back and oth­er projects in the works at Al­ny­lam — ex­act­ly the kind of seep­age the biotech was try­ing hard to pre­vent.

“Re­vusir­an dis­con­tin­u­a­tion may have lim­it­ed read-through to the Patisir­an in FAP,” not­ed Jef­feries’ Gena Wang Thurs­day morn­ing, “how­ev­er, we see po­ten­tial­ly high risk to TTRsc02 pro­gram be­cause 1) same siR­NA se­quence as re­vusir­an; 2) in­crease in neu­ropa­thy in Ph2OLE and im­bal­ance of mor­tal­i­ty in Ph3 sug­gest lack of drug ac­tiv­i­ty for re­vusir­an even though the caus­es could be un­der­ly­ing dis­ease; 3) giv­en re­vusir­an’s mor­tal­i­ty im­bal­ance and mor­tal­i­ty as pri­ma­ry end­point in tafadamis (PFE) Ph3 tri­al for FAC/SSA, the va­lid­i­ty of 6MWT as pri­ma­ry end­point re­mains to be seen.”

Al­ny­lam has been one of the pi­o­neers of RNAi drug de­vel­op­ment, go­ing through plen­ty of ups and downs along the way. The com­pa­ny was once a dar­ling of Big Phar­ma, lost a lot of at­ten­tion when de­vel­op­ment times seemed too long and risky, then re­gained a lot of its verve with a big buy-in from Sanofi. Its two late-stage stud­ies have sparked high hopes among long­time in­vestors, who have been wait­ing years for the big pay­off.

Al­ny­lam al­so isn’t the on­ly RNAi com­pa­ny to face safe­ty is­sues. Io­n­is CEO Stan­ley Crooke sparked a pan­ic ear­li­er in the year, ex­plain­ing dur­ing a call with an­a­lysts in May that their drug for TTR amy­loid car­diomy­opa­thy – at high dos­es — had been linked to per­plex­ing low platelet counts in pa­tients. That caused the FDA to trig­ger a clin­i­cal hold on a pro­gram, spurring Glax­o­SmithK­line to put a planned Phase III on a back burn­er.

Wednes­day evening, the com­pa­ny was try­ing to sound re­as­sur­ing. And in­ves­ti­ga­tors hit heav­i­ly on the dif­fer­ent tech­nolo­gies that dis­tin­guish this drug from the rest of Al­ny­lam’s clin­i­cal-stage drugs. But that’s go­ing to be a tough act to pull off.

“Pa­tient safe­ty comes first. We have stopped all dos­ing and are ac­tive­ly mon­i­tor­ing pa­tients across re­vusir­an stud­ies to en­sure their safe­ty. We will al­so con­tin­ue to eval­u­ate EN­DEAV­OUR da­ta to un­der­stand the po­ten­tial cause of these find­ings,” said Maraganore in a state­ment. “While this out­come is dis­ap­point­ing giv­en the lack of avail­able treat­ment op­tions for pa­tients suf­fer­ing from this dev­as­tat­ing dis­ease, we re­main com­mit­ted to serv­ing the needs of the AT­TR amy­loi­do­sis com­mu­ni­ty. We would like to thank pa­tients, care­givers, in­ves­ti­ga­tors, and study staff who have been so sup­port­ive of the re­vusir­an pro­gram.”

 

Has the mo­ment fi­nal­ly ar­rived for val­ue-based health­care?

RBC Capital Markets’ Healthcare Technology Analyst, Sean Dodge, spotlights a new breed of tech-enabled providers who are rapidly transforming the way clinicians deliver healthcare, and explores the key question: can this accelerating revolution overturn the US healthcare system?

Key points

Tech-enabled healthcare providers are poised to help the US transition to value, not volume, as the basis for reward.
The move to value-based care has policy momentum, but is risky and complex for clinicians.
Outsourced tech specialists are emerging to provide the required expertise, while healthcare and tech are also converging through M&A.
Value-based care remains in its early stages, but the transition is accelerating and represents a huge addressable market.

Sanofi, Re­gen­eron boast PhI­II win with Dupix­ent in COPD, clear­ing first bar for ex­pan­sion

Dupixent, the blockbuster anti-inflammatory drug from Sanofi and Regeneron, has cleared a high-stakes Phase III study in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the companies announced Thursday morning.

If they hold up in a second, identical trial, the data pave the way for Dupixent to become the first biologic to treat patients whose COPD remains uncontrolled despite being on maximal standard-of-care inhaled therapy — the patient population studied in the pivotal program. The companies had spotlighted this as a key readout as they look to expand the Dupixent franchise and explore its full potential.

FDA ad­vi­sors unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval for Bio­gen's ALS drug

A panel of outside advisors to the FDA unanimously recommended that the agency grant accelerated approval to Biogen’s ALS drug tofersen despite the drug failing the primary goal of its Phase III study, an endorsement that could pave a path forward for the treatment.

By a 9-0 vote, members of the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee said there was sufficient evidence that tofersen’s effect on a certain protein associated with ALS is reasonably likely to predict a benefit for patients. But panelists stopped short of advocating for a full approval, voting 3-5 against (with one abstention) and largely citing the failed pivotal study.

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Alaa Halawa, executive director at Mubadala’s US venture group

The ven­ture crew at Mubadala are up­ping their biotech cre­ation game, tak­ing care­ful aim at a new fron­tier in drug de­vel­op­ment

It started with a cup of coffee and a slow burning desire to go early and long in the biotech creation business.

Wrapping up a 15-year discovery stint at Genentech back in the summer of 2021, Rami Hannoush was treated to a caffeine-fueled review of the latest work UCSF’s Jim Wells had been doing on protein degradation — one of the hottest fields in drug development.

“Jim and I have known each other for the past 15 years through Genentech collaborations. We met over coffee, and he was telling me about this concept of the company that he was thinking of,” says Hannoush. “And I got immediately intrigued by it because I knew that this could open up a big space in terms of adding a new modality in drug discovery that is desperately needed in pharma.”

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Chat­G­PT with phar­ma da­ta de­buts for med­ical meet­ings, be­gin­ning with AACR

What do you get when you combine ChatGPT generative AI technology with specific pharma and clinical datasets? A time-saving tool that can answer questions about medical conference abstracts and clinical findings in seconds in one new application from ZoomRx called FermaGPT.

ZoomRx is debuting a public version of its generative AI product specifically for medical conferences beginning this week for the upcoming American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting that runs April 14-19.

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Vas Narasimhan, Novartis CEO (Gian Ehrenzeller/Keystone via AP)

No­var­tis pulls the plug on UK-based car­dio­vas­cu­lar study

Novartis is calling off a UK-based trial for Leqvio in the primary prevention of cardiovascular events in patients with high cholesterol, the company confirmed on Wednesday.

The Swiss pharma giant made the decision after “careful evaluation,” a spokesperson told Endpoints News via email. The trial, dubbed ORION-17, was planned in partnership with England’s National Health Service (NHS) and was part of the company’s strategy to establish Leqvio as a standard of care in cardiovascular disease management.

FDA re­jects Ab­b­Vie's in­fu­sion ther­a­py for Parkin­son's, re­quests more in­fo on pump de­vice

The FDA rejected AbbVie’s 24-hour infusion therapy for Parkinson’s, saying it needs more information on a device used to administer the treatment before it can clear it.

The Chicago-area drugmaker said in a press release that the complete response letter from the agency didn’t include any requests for more efficacy or safety trials related to the drug, known as ABBV-951. The company said it aims to “resubmit the NDA as soon as possible.”

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Quince Ther­a­peu­tics faces takeover bid from share­hold­er Echo Lake Cap­i­tal

A bid to take over the biotech Quince Therapeutics has been put forward by one of its shareholders.

On Tuesday, Echo Lake Capital sent a letter to Quince’s board of directors putting forth a proposal to acquire all the biotech’s stock for $1.60 per share, which would value a takeover at around $58 million.

In the letter, Echo Lake said that it believes Quince’s stock is severely undervalued and that no drugs are being actively marketed or developed that require cash expenditures. It’s trading below the value of its assets, Echo Lake said.

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Rohan Palekar, 89bio CEO

89bio’s PhII da­ta add to quick suc­ces­sion of NASH read­outs as field seeks turn­around

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.