Hal Barron, GlaxoSmithKline R&D chief (GSK via investor day livestream)

Glax­o­SmithK­line trum­pets a PhI­II win in one of Hal Bar­ron's hand­picked drugs, a day af­ter Fi­bro­Gen's face­plant. Will it mat­ter enough to crit­ics?

As Glax­o­SmithK­line CEO Em­ma Walm­s­ley charts a new course ahead of the Big Phar­ma’s planned split while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly un­der im­mense pres­sure from ac­tivist in­vestors, the com­pa­ny is tout­ing pos­i­tive topline re­sults from a late-stage pro­gram Fri­day morn­ing. And it comes less than 24 hours af­ter Fi­bro­Gen and As­traZeneca ran in­to a slap­down at an FDA ad­comm for a sim­i­lar drug.

The da­ta come from an ex­per­i­men­tal drug known as dapro­du­s­tat, with GSK eval­u­at­ing the can­di­date for ane­mia as­so­ci­at­ed with chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease. Dapro­du­s­tat reached its pri­ma­ry end­points in five Phase III tri­als across a va­ri­ety of pa­tient pop­u­la­tions and dos­ing reg­i­mens, GSK an­nounced, ahead of planned reg­u­la­to­ry sub­mis­sions ex­pect­ed in 2022.

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