FDA commissioner Hahn ousts agency’s new chief spokesperson as plasma controversy continues to smolder

Stephen Hahn, FDA commissioner (Alex Brandon/AP Images)

August 28, 2020 02:05 PM EDT

FDA commissioner Hahn ousts agency’s new chief spokesperson as plasma controversy continues to smolder

Jason Mast

Editor

FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn capped a week of controversy over a fiasco revolving around his misleading comments on a Covid-19 treatment by ousting the agency’s newly-hired chief spokesperson, Emily Miller.

Miller had worked at the right-wing cable news network One America News — a favorite of President Trump’s — as well as for the campaign of Senator Ted Cruz before she was placed at the FDA just 11 days ago, according to the New York Times, which broke the story. Her appointment raised eyebrows at an agency that has long hired civil servants for such positions and worked to maintain its independence from political winds.

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July 24, 2021 06:00 AM EDT

Weekly

Novartis reshuffles its wild cards; Tough sell for Biogen? Googling proteins; Ken Frazier's new gig; and more

Amber Tong

Senior Editor

Welcome back to Endpoints Weekly, your review of the week’s top biopharma headlines. Want this in your inbox every Saturday morning? Current Endpoints readers can visit their reader profile to add Endpoints Weekly. New to Endpoints? Sign up here.

If you enjoy the People section in this report, you may also want to check out Peer Review, my colleagues Alex Hoffman and Kathy Wong’s comprehensive compilation of comings and goings in biopharma.

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Demis Hassabis, DeepMind CEO (Qianlong/Imaginechina via AP Images)

July 23, 2021 11:15 AM EDT

Discovery

Google's DeepMind opens its protein database to science — potentially cracking drug R&D wide open

Jason Mast

Editor

Nearly a year ago, Google’s AI outfit DeepMind announced they had cracked one of the oldest problems in biology: predicting a protein’s structure from its sequence alone. Now they’ve turned that software on nearly every human protein and hundreds of thousands of additional proteins from organisms important to medical research, such as fruit flies, mice and malaria parasite.

The new database of roughly 350,000 protein sequences and structures represents a potentially monumental achievement for the life sciences, one that could hasten new biological insights and the development of new drugs. DeepMind said it will be free and accessible to all researchers and companies.

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July 21, 2021 07:17 PM EDTUpdated July 23, 03:30 PM

Pharma

Inside Biogen's scramble to sell Aduhelm: Project 'Javelin' and pressure to ID as many patients as possible

Zachary Brennan

Senior Editor

In anticipation of Aduhelm’s approval for Alzheimer’s in June, Biogen employees were directed to identify and guarantee treatment centers would administer the drug through a program called “Javelin,” a senior Biogen employee told Endpoints News.

The program identified about 800 centers for use, he said, and Biogen now pays for the use of bioassays to identify beta amyloid in potential patients having undergone a lumbar puncture procedure, the employee said — and one center preparing to administer the drug confirmed its participation in the bioassay program.

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ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Director-Regulatory

Icosavax, Inc.

Seattle, WA, USA

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Vas Narasimhan, Novartis CEO (Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

July 21, 2021 09:51 AM EDTUpdated July 23, 01:52 PM

R&D

Novartis discards one of its ‘wild card’ drugs after it flops in key study. But it takes one more for the hand

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Always remember just how risky it is to gamble big on small studies.

A little more than 4 years ago, Novartis reportedly put up a package worth up to $1 billion for the dry eye drug ECF843 after a small biotech called Lubris put it through its paces in a tiny study of 40 moderate to severe patients, tracking some statistically significant markers of efficacy.

By last fall, the program had risen up to become one of CEO Vas Narasimhan’s top “wild card” programs in line for a potential breakthrough year in 2021. These drugs were all considered high-risk, high-reward efforts. And in this case, risk won.

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July 23, 2021 09:49 AM EDT

Pharma

FDA+

EMA rejects FDA-approved Parkinson's drug, signs off on Moderna vaccine use in adolescents ahead of FDA

Zachary Brennan

Senior Editor

The European Medicines Agency on Friday rejected Kyowa Kirin’s Parkinson’s disease drug Nouryant (istradefylline), which the US FDA approved in 2019 under the brand name Nourianz.

EMA said it considered that the results of the clinical studies used to support the application “were inconsistent and did not satisfactorily show that Nouryant was effective at reducing the ‘off’ time. Only four out of the eight studies showed a reduction in ‘off’ time, and the effect did not increase with an increased dose of Nouryant.”

Albert Bourla, Pfizer CEO (Evan Vucci/AP Images)

July 23, 2021 07:22 AM EDTUpdated 08:04 AM

Coronavirus

Covid-19 roundup: Pfizer to supply US with 200M more vaccines as UK study finds higher antibodies in 8-10 week intervals

Max Gelman

Editor

Zachary Brennan

Senior Editor

The US government has purchased 200 million more doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, the companies announced Friday morning.

Pfizer and BioNTech expect to deliver 110 million of the additional doses by Dec. 31, with the remaining 90 million doses to be delivered no later than April 30, 2022. The price was not disclosed, and the US government has the option to acquire an updated version of the vaccine to address potential variants, as well as new formulations of the vaccine, if available and authorized.

July 23, 2021 06:58 AM EDT

R&D

Pharma

6 top drugmakers offer perspectives on FDA's new covariates in RCTs guidance

Zachary Brennan

Senior Editor

Back in May, the FDA revised and expanded a 2019 draft guidance that spells out how to adjust for covariates in the statistical analysis of randomized controlled trials.

Building on the ICH’s E9 guideline on the statistical principles for clinical trials, the 3-page draft was transformed into an 8-page draft, with more detailed recommendations on linear and nonlinear models to analyze the efficacy endpoints in RCTs.

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ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Director, High-Throughput Screening (HTS) Drug Discovery Group

Pliant Therapeutics

South San Francisco, CA, USA

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Al Sandrock, Biogen R&D chief (Biogen via YouTube)

July 22, 2021 04:37 PM EDTUpdated July 23, 05:35 AM

Pharma

Biogen has a shaky end to H1 with a $542M write-off adding to its woes — but analysts see big revenue ahead for Aduhelm

Jason Mast

Editor

All eyes at Biogen’s Q2 earnings call Thursday were on Aduhelm, but investors also got a glimpse of what Biogen would have faced had the FDA not opted to approve their controversial Alzheimer’s drug.

That glimpse, revealing a combination of declining sales, growing competition and failed medicines, underscores the stakes of the big biotech’s Aduhelm efforts, as execs punch back at the criticism they’ve engendered in the political and medical world and vigorously pushes its sales staff to roll out the drug as fast as possible.

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Ken Frazier, Merck CEO (Bess Adler/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

July 22, 2021 08:48 AM EDTUpdated 02:32 PM

People

Ex-Merck chief Ken Frazier takes a leading role in a $600M 'Health Assurance' venture fund

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Ken Frazier has opened up a new chapter in his storied career.

The ex-Merck CEO is joining a high-minded venture group with plans to carve a unique role for itself at the well-traveled juncture of tech and life sciences. And the new job comes through an old college buddy.

Officially, Frazier now becomes chairman of General Catalyst’s health assurance initiative. Their $600 million fund was unveiled back in early April, planning to invest in companies that could push the “evolution from a ‘sick care’ system to a resilient, proactive Health Assurance system designed to help people stay well, bend the cost curve, and make quality care more affordable and more accessible to all.”

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