Can the glob­al­ly in­flu­en­tial Google rev­o­lu­tion­ize the multi­bil­lion-dol­lar clin­i­cal tri­al busi­ness?

Some of the biggest phar­mas out there think so, look­ing to Google’s sis­ter out­fit Ver­i­ly — op­er­at­ing un­der Al­pha­bet, the par­ent com­pa­ny — to guide the in­dus­try in­to the dig­i­tal age with its ex­tra­or­di­nary reach in­to the lives of bil­lions of peo­ple on the plan­et.

This morn­ing, No­var­tis, Pfiz­er, Sanofi and Ot­su­ka all lined up to jump on the Pro­ject Base­line plat­form at the Google-re­lat­ed life sci­ences di­vi­sion, look­ing to em­ploy the dig­i­tal Go­liath’s tech ser­vices in re­cruit­ing pa­tients and or­ga­niz­ing the mass of da­ta com­ing out of the glob­al tri­al sys­tem.

Build­ing on Base­line’s ini­tial plans to an­a­lyze da­ta on 10,000 vol­un­teers, the Google op­er­a­tion is now look­ing to steer peo­ple to drug stud­ies as they search for more in­for­ma­tion on the dis­eases that plague them. That can ex­tend Big Phar­ma’s reach — and in­flu­ence — in­to mil­lions of house­holds.

Just how big is that reach? One re­cent as­sess­ment con­clud­ed that Google con­trols 90% of the search en­gine mar­ket, with 63,000 search­es per sec­ond, while the av­er­age per­son makes 3 to 4 search­es per day. And health­care is one of their biggest sin­gle fo­cus­es.

Jes­si­ca Mega

This ini­tia­tive is hap­pen­ing at a time the FDA has been en­cour­ag­ing a fresh look at the way tri­als are de­signed and ex­e­cut­ed, look­ing to short­en the de­vel­op­ment path for the most promis­ing ther­a­pies — or trig­ger­ing a fast ex­e­cu­tion of the weak­est drug can­di­dates. 

For all the talk about change, though, the de­vel­op­ment path­way for new drugs has large­ly stuck with a tra­di­tion­al gold stan­dard in use for years. Ver­i­ly will see if it can steer a new di­rec­tion, and that has the po­ten­tial to make for some dra­mat­ic changes in the CRO world.

“No­var­tis, Ot­su­ka, Pfiz­er and Sanofi have been ear­ly adopters of ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy and dig­i­tal tools to im­prove clin­i­cal re­search op­er­a­tions, and to­geth­er we’re tak­ing an­oth­er step to­wards mak­ing re­search ac­ces­si­ble and gen­er­at­ing ev­i­dence to in­form bet­ter treat­ments and care,” not­ed Ver­i­ly CMO Jes­si­ca Mega in a pre­pared state­ment.

Im­age Source: Sipa USA via AP

Known in the in­dus­try as the Asia-Pa­cif­ic CRO, Novotech is now lead CRO ser­vices provider for the grow­ing num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al biotechs se­lect­ing the re­gion for their stud­ies.

Re­flect­ing this Asia-Pa­cif­ic growth, Novotech staff num­bers are up 20% since De­cem­ber 2018 to 600 in-house clin­i­cal re­search peo­ple across a full range of ser­vices, across the re­gion.

Novotech’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties have been rec­og­nized by an­a­lysts like Frost & Sul­li­van, most re­cent­ly with the pres­ti­gious Asia-Pa­cif­ic CRO Biotech of the year award for best prac­tices in clin­i­cal re­search for biotechs for the fifth year. See oth­er awards here.

Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb has suf­fered an­oth­er painful set­back in its years-long quest to ex­pand the reach of Op­di­vo. The phar­ma gi­ant this morn­ing not­ed that their Check­mate-459 study com­par­ing Op­di­vo with Bay­er’s Nex­avar in front­line cas­es of he­pa­to­cel­lu­lar car­ci­no­ma — the most com­mon form of liv­er can­cer — failed to hit the pri­ma­ry end­point on over­all sur­vival.

This was a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in Bris­tol-My­ers’ tal­ly of PD-1 cat­a­lysts this year. Nex­avar (so­rafenib) has been the stan­dard of care in front­line HCC for the past decade, though Op­di­vo has been mak­ing head­way in sec­ond-line HCC cas­es, where it’s go­ing toe-to-toe with Bay­er’s Sti­var­ga (re­go­rafenib) af­ter re­cent ap­provals shook up the mar­ket.

Ear­li­er in the week we learned that Sanofi was bring­ing out the bud­get ax to trim 466 R&D jobs in Eu­rope, re­tool­ing its ap­proach to car­dio as re­search chief John Reed beefed up their work in can­cer and gene ther­a­pies. And we’re end­ing the week with news that the phar­ma gi­ant has al­so been qui­et­ly re­duc­ing staff in the US, tar­get­ing hun­dreds of jobs as the com­pa­ny push­es vol­un­tary buy­outs with a fo­cus on R&D sup­port ser­vices.

The NASH par­ty is over at No­var­tis-backed Cona­tus. And this time they’re turn­ing off the lights.

More than 2 years af­ter No­var­tis sur­prised the biotech in­vest­ment com­mu­ni­ty with its $50 mil­lion up­front and promise of R&D sup­port to part­ner with the lit­tle biotech on NASH — ig­nit­ing a light­ning strike for the share price — Cona­tus $CNAT is back with the lat­est bit­ter tale to tell about em­ri­c­as­an, which once in­spired con­fi­dence at the phar­ma gi­ant.

Shares of Krys­tal Biotech took off this morn­ing $KRYS af­ter the lit­tle biotech re­port­ed promis­ing re­sults from its gene ther­a­py to treat a rare skin dis­ease called epi­der­mol­y­sis bul­losa.

Fo­cus­ing on an up­date with 4 new pa­tients, re­searchers spot­light­ed the suc­cess of KB103 in clos­ing some stub­born wounds. Krys­tal says that of 4 re­cur­ring and 2 chron­ic skin wounds treat­ed with the gene ther­a­py, the KB103 group saw the clo­sure of 5. The 6th — a chron­ic wound, de­fined as a wound that had re­mained open for more than 12 weeks — was par­tial­ly closed. That brings the to­tal so far to 8 treat­ed wounds, with 7 clo­sures.

Fresh off the high of its Nas­daq IPO de­but, and the low of com­par­isons to Cymabay — whose NASH drug re­cent­ly stum­bled — Gen­fit on Mon­day un­veiled an up to $228 mil­lion deal with transpa­cif­ic biotech Terns Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to de­vel­op its flag­ship ex­per­i­men­tal liv­er drug — elafi­bra­nor — in Greater Chi­na.

The deal comes more than a week af­ter Gen­fit $GN­FT is­sued a fiery de­fense of its dual PPAR ag­o­nist elafi­bra­nor, when com­peti­tor Cymabay’s PPARδ ag­o­nist, se­ladel­par, fiz­zled in a snap­shot of da­ta from an on­go­ing mid-stage tri­al. The main goal at the end of 12 weeks was for se­ladel­par to in­duce a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in liv­er fat con­tent, but da­ta showed that pa­tients on the place­bo ac­tu­al­ly per­formed bet­ter.

→ Alex­ion $ALXN has scored a speedy re­view for Ul­tomiris for pa­tients with atyp­i­cal he­molyt­ic ure­mic syn­drome (aHUS) af­ter post­ing pos­i­tive da­ta from a piv­otal study in Jan­u­ary. The drug is the rare dis­ease com­pa­ny’s shot at pro­tect­ing its block­buster blood dis­or­der fran­chise that is cur­rent­ly cen­tered around its flag­ship drug, Soliris, which is a com­ple­ment in­hibitor typ­i­cal­ly ad­min­is­tered every two weeks. Ul­tomiris has a sim­i­lar mech­a­nism of ac­tion but re­quires less-fre­quent dos­ing — every eight weeks. The de­ci­sion date has been set to Oc­to­ber 19. Late last year, Ul­tomiris se­cured ap­proval for noc­tur­nal he­mo­glo­bin­uria (PNH) pa­tients.