Adri­an Raw­cliffe

It was great get­ting back to a live ES­MO con­fer­ence/we­bi­nar in Paris fol­lowed by a live pop-up event for the End­points 11 in Boston. We’re stay­ing on the road in Oc­to­ber with our re­turn for a live/stream­ing EU­BIO22 in Lon­don.

Kate Bing­ham

Sil­i­con Val­ley Bank’s Nooman Haque and I are once again jump­ing back in­to the thick of it with a slate of vir­tu­al and live events on Oc­to­ber 12. I’ll get the ball rolling with a vir­tu­al fire­side chat with No­vo Nordisk R&D chief Mar­cus Schindler, cov­er­ing their pipeline plans and BD work.

Af­ter that I’ve teed up two we­bi­na­rs on mR­NA re­search — with some of the top ex­perts in Eu­rope — and the on­col­o­gy scene, build­ing bet­ter CARs in Eu­rope.

That af­ter­noon, we’ll switch to a live/stream­ing hy­brid event, with a chance to gath­er once again now that the pan­dem­ic has fad­ed. I’ve re­cruit­ed a pan­el of top biotech ex­ecs to look at sur­viv­ing the crazy pub­lic mar­ket, with Adri­an Raw­cliffe, the CEO of Adap­ti­m­mune, SV’s Kate Bing­ham, Mereo CEO Denise Scots-Knight and An­drew Hop­kins, chief of Ex­sci­en­tia.

An­drew Hop­kins

Denise Scots-Knight

That will be fol­lowed by my spe­cial, live fire­side chat with Su­san Gal­braith, the on­col­o­gy R&D chief at As­traZeneca. And then we’ll turn to Nooman’s pan­el, where he’ll be talk­ing with Katya Smirnyag­i­na with Ox­ford Sci­ence En­ter­pris­es, Maina Bhaman with Sofinno­va Part­ners and Roset­ta Cap­i­tal’s Jonathan Hep­ple about nav­i­gat­ing the se­vere cap­i­tal head­winds.

You can re­view the full sched­ule and buy tick­ets here and re­view every­thing we have planned. It will be a packed day. I hope to see you there. It’s been sev­er­al years now since I’ve had a chance to meet peo­ple in the Gold­en Tri­an­gle. I’m very much look­ing for­ward to it.

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.

Incyte touted an accelerated approval for its PD-1 retifanlimab in a rare skin cancer on Wednesday, roughly a year and a half after the drug suffered a rejection in squamous cell carcinoma of the anal canal (SCAC).

Retifanlimab, marketed as Zynyz, was approved for metastatic or recurrent locally advanced Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC), a fast-growing skin cancer typically characterized by a single, painless nodule. It’s roughly 40 times rarer than melanoma, according to the nonprofit Skin Cancer Foundation — but incidence is growing, particularly among older adults, Incyte said in its announcement.

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.