Going inside cells, Sung Joo Lee has sketched some big goals for his small — but global

SJ Lee [File photo]

July 17, 2019 07:10 AM EDTUpdated 07:25 AM

Going inside cells, Sung Joo Lee has sketched some big goals for his small — but global — team of drug hunters

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

For a small biotech based in South Korea with a research arm in Cambridge, MA, Orum Therapeutics has sketched out some big goals aimed at developing antibodies for intracellular targets. And now they have a new $30 million round to push the work forward, aiming at a slate of currently undruggable quests.

Orum has been working on a platform tech out of Ajou University that relies on endocytosis to smuggle antibodies and their cargo inside a cell. They’ve published work in Nature that illustrates its preclinical potential in RAS mutations, and KRAS is on their list of targets.

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MedTech clinical trials require a unique regulatory and study design approach and so engaging a highly experienced CRO to ensure compliance and accurate data across all stages is critical to development milestones.

Innovative MedTech Demands Specialist Clinical Trial Regulatory Affairs and Design

Tom Avery

Scientific and Medical Affairs Specialist, Medical Devices

Avance Clinical is the Australian CRO for international biotechs providing world-class clinical research services with FDA-accepted data across all phases. With Avance Clinical, biotech companies can leverage Australia’s supportive clinical trials environment which includes no IND requirement plus a 43.5% Government incentive rebate on clinical spend. The CRO has been delivering clinical drug development services for international biotechs for FDA and EMA regulatory approval for the past 24 years. The company has been recognized for the past two consecutive years with the prestigious Frost & Sullivan CRO Best Practices Award and a finalist in Informa Pharma’s Best CRO award for 2022.

Mathai Mammen (Rob Tannenbaum, Endpoints News at BIO 2018)

August 8, 2022 07:54 PM EDTUpdated 23 hours ago

People

Mathai Mammen makes an abrupt exit as head of the big R&D group at J&J

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

In an after-the-bell shocker, J&J announced Monday evening that Mathai Mammen has abruptly exited J&J as head of its top-10 R&D group.

Recruited from Merck five years ago, where the soft-spoken Mammen was being groomed as the successor to Roger Perlmutter, he had been one of the top-paid R&D chiefs in biopharma. His group spent $12 billion last year on drug development, putting it in the top 5 in the industry.

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Illustration: Kim Ryu for Endpoints News

August 9, 2022 07:00 AM EDTUpdated 08:48 AM

R&D

In Focus

Why non-opioid pain drugs keep failing — and what's next for the field

Lei Lei Wu

News Reporter

In 1938, Rita Levi-Montalcini was forced to move her lab into her bedroom in Turin, as Mussolini’s facist government expelled Jewish people from studying or working in schools in Italy. Levi-Montalcini, then just a few years out of medical school and using sewing needles as scalpels in her makeshift lab, would soon discover nerve growth factor, or NGF, in chicken embryos.

Her discoveries formed the basis of our understanding of the peripheral nervous system and how cells talk to each other, and Levi-Montalcini went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1986. Much later, NGF was hailed as a promising target for new pain therapies, with some analysts quoting an $11 billion market. However, the latest anti-NGF candidate, Pfizer and Eli Lilly’s tanezumab, was rejected by the FDA last year because of a side effect that dissolved bone in some of its patients.

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ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Chief Scientific Officer

Experimental Drug Development Centre

Singapore

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Samantha Du, Zai Lab CEO

August 10, 2022 06:35 AM EDT

R&D

Anyone still looking for a CD47? Zai Lab shelves PhI program after reviewing 'competitive landscape'

Amber Tong

Senior Editor

Over the past few years, the promise of blocking CD47 — a “don’t eat me” signal co-opted by cancer cells — has sent drugmakers big and small into a frenzy. But one biotech is now bowing out.

Zai Lab is deprioritizing ZL-1201, its CD47 inhibitor, scrapping plans for a Phase II trial. It will now “pursue out-licensing opportunities,” the company said in its Q2 update. The decision was based on a review of the competitive landscape, it added, without going into further details.

Ted Love, Global Blood Therapeutics CEO

August 8, 2022 07:34 AM EDTUpdated 11:57 AM

Deals

Updated: Pfizer scoops up Global Blood Therapeutics and its sickle cell therapies for $5.4B

Amber Tong

Senior Editor

Pfizer is dropping $5.4 billion to acquire Global Blood Therapeutics.

Just ahead of the weekend, word got out that Pfizer was close to clinching a $5 billion buyout — albeit with other potential buyers still at the table. The pharma giant, flush with cash from Covid-19 vaccine sales, apparently got out on top.

The deal immediately swells Pfizer’s previously tiny sickle cell disease portfolio from just a Phase I program to one with an approved drug, Oxbryta, plus a whole pipeline that, if all approved, the company believes could make for a $3 billion franchise at peak.

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Steve Paul, Karuna Therapeutics CEO (Third Rock)

August 8, 2022 08:58 AM EDTUpdated 10:13 AM

R&D

Karuna's schizophrenia drug passes a closely-watched PhIII test, will head to FDA in mid-2023

Kyle LaHucik

Associate Editor

An investigational pill that combines a former Eli Lilly CNS compound with an overactive bladder drug was better than placebo at reducing a scale of symptoms experienced by patients with schizophrenia in a Phase III trial.

Karuna Therapeutics’ drug passed the primary goal in EMERGENT-2, the Boston biotech said early Monday morning, alongside quarterly earnings. The study is the first of Karuna’s four Phase III clinical trials to read out in schizophrenia and will provide the backbone to the biotech’s first drug approval application, slated for mid-2023.

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HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra (Patrick Semansky/AP Images)

August 9, 2022 01:48 PM EDTUpdated 03:45 PM

Pharma

US weighs new route of administration for monkeypox vaccine as cases climb — report

Nicole DeFeudis

Editor

Less than a week after HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra declared monkeypox a national health emergency, reports have emerged that the US plans to extend its vaccine supply by opting for a different route of administration.

Officials are expected to call for intradermal injection of Bavarian Nordic’s Jynneos vaccine — the only shot approved specifically for monkeypox in the US — as opposed to subcutaneous injection, unnamed sources told both the New York Times and Washington Post on Tuesday.

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August 9, 2022 01:07 PM EDTUpdated 04:25 PM

Pharma

Marketing

'Messy at best': Is the US repeating the same Covid missteps with monkeypox messaging?

Beth Snyder Bulik

Senior Editor

When Kyle Planck first suspected he might have monkeypox in late June, he went to the CDC website and found six photos of different types of lesions. And that was about it for general public information.

Planck, who is a sixth-year PhD pharmacology researcher at Weill Cornell, kept looking though and found a separate part of the CDC website meant for healthcare professionals. There he found a medical slide deck with more pictures, professional journal articles and more details about symptoms and diagnosis.

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David Zaccardelli, Verona Pharma CEO

August 9, 2022 10:45 AM EDTUpdated 03:14 PM

R&D

Verona’s COPD drug shines in PhIII study, potentially clearing path to FDA — shares jump

Aayushi Pratap

News Reporter

UK-based Verona Pharma’s COPD drug, ensifentrine, has succeeded in its Phase III trial, paving the way for a possible FDA approval.

In Verona’s Phase III ENHANCE-2 study, roughly 800 patients with moderate to severe COPD received ensifentrine or placebo through a nebulizer twice a day for 24 weeks. At 12 hours post-treatment on week 12, the placebo-corrected change in forced expiratory volume (FEV1) — a standard measure of lung function that tests how much breath one can forcefully exhale in one second — was 94 mL, leading the trial to meet its primary endpoint.