In a pi­o­neer­ing first, As­traZeneca scores FDA OK to use its PARP against breast can­cer

As­traZeneca $AZN has picked up an­oth­er key win for its can­cer drug fran­chise.

The FDA ap­proved its PARP in­hibitor Lyn­parza for BR­CA-mu­tat­ed metasta­t­ic breast can­cer, of­fer­ing the phar­ma gi­ant a path for­ward to ex­pand its use be­yond ovar­i­an can­cer. And this is a first in the field.

Pas­cal So­ri­ot

Their Phase III da­ta made the show­case round at AS­CO last sum­mer and is fur­ther en­hanc­ing the FDA’s fo­cus on drugs that can tar­get can­cers trig­gered by the same ge­net­ic caus­es. The drug was linked with tu­mor shrink­age in 60% of the pa­tients with germline BR­CA1 or BR­CA2 mu­ta­tions tak­ing the drug, com­pared to 29% in the chemo group. And the OK gives them an edge over their ri­vals: Clo­vis’ Rubra­ca and Tesaro’s Ze­ju­la.

Lyn­parza has been a key part of As­traZeneca CEO Pas­cal So­ri­ot’s case that on­col­o­gy rep­re­sents a big growth op­por­tu­ni­ty — bad­ly need­ed af­ter gener­ics chewed up mar­ket nich­es worth bil­lions. Pfiz­er has a PARP of its own in late-stage de­vel­op­ment, which will like­ly fur­ther crowd this seg­ment.

The ap­proval is al­so good news for Mer­ck, which signed a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion deal around Lyn­parza.

Richard Paz­dur

“This class of drugs has been used to treat ad­vanced, BR­CA-mu­tat­ed ovar­i­an can­cer and has now shown ef­fi­ca­cy in treat­ing cer­tain types of BR­CA-mu­tat­ed breast can­cer,” said Richard Paz­dur, di­rec­tor of the FDA’s On­col­o­gy Cen­ter of Ex­cel­lence and act­ing di­rec­tor of the Of­fice of Hema­tol­ogy and On­col­o­gy Prod­ucts in the FDA’s Cen­ter for Drug Eval­u­a­tion and Re­search. “This ap­proval demon­strates the cur­rent par­a­digm of de­vel­op­ing drugs that tar­get the un­der­ly­ing ge­net­ic caus­es of a can­cer, of­ten across can­cer types.”

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End­points 20(+2) un­der 40, 2023; Bio­phar­ma's high­est-paid CEOs; N-of-1 CRISPR sto­ry goes on af­ter tragedy; and more

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.

We will be off Monday in observance of Memorial Day — and when we get back, it will be a straight march to ASCO, BIO and more. Enjoy the (long) weekend!

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Douglas Love, Annexon CEO

An­nex­on’s GA drug miss­es on pri­ma­ry goal but win on vi­su­al acu­ity will be fo­cus of planned late-stage tri­al

Annexon’s complement inhibitor didn’t prove better than sham at reducing lesion growth in a leading cause of blindness, but the biotech still plans to move forward on the back of secondary endpoints showing visual acuity preservation, which will “certainly” be the primary goal in a late-stage trial to be discussed shortly with the FDA, CEO Douglas Love told Endpoints News. 

The California biotech’s ANX007 was not statistically significant compared to pooled sham, the comparator, at 12 months in patients with geographic atrophy, per a Wednesday presentation. In every-month dosing, the GA lesion area changed about 6.2% from baseline (p=0.526) and 1.3% (p=0.896) in the every-other-month group. In a March note, Jefferies analyst Suji Jeong said a reduction of 20% to 30% would be “encouraging.”

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FDA ap­proves Lex­i­con’s heart-fail­ure drug af­ter de­feat in di­a­betes

The FDA on Friday approved Lexicon’s heart failure drug sotagliflozin following a string of setbacks for the pharma company, including an FDA rejection in diabetes and the loss of a development deal with Sanofi.

The dual SGLT1 and SGLT2 inhibitor will be marketed as Inpefa and is a once-daily tablet. It’s been approved to reduce the risk of cardiovascular death and heart failure-related hospitalization or urgent visits in adults with heart failure or type 2 diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, and other cardiovascular risk factors. The label spans the range of left ventricular ejection fraction, including preserved ejection fraction and reduced ejection fraction, as well as patients with or without diabetes, Lexicon said Friday.

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Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion to re­ceive few­er Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech vac­cine dos­es un­der amend­ed con­tract

The European Commission has made a few changes to its vaccine contract with Pfizer and BioNTech, reducing the dose volume while extending the delivery timeline to cope with “evolving public health needs.”

The Commission previously struck a contract in May 2021 for 900 million doses, with the option to purchase another 900 million. Of those, 450 million were expected to be delivered in 2023, though an amendment now calls for fewer doses. While neither the Commission nor Pfizer and BioNTech have revealed an exact amount, an unnamed source told Reuters that the amendment reduces the remaining expected doses by about a third.

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EMA rec­om­mends re­vok­ing au­tho­riza­tion of No­var­tis' sick­le cell drug

The European Medicines Agency’s committee for medicinal products for human use (CHMP) on Friday recommended revoking the marketing authorization for Novartis’ treatment for a painful complication related to sickle cell, after a recent study did not confirm its clinical benefit.

CHMP’s review looked at results of the STAND study, finding that Adakveo (crizanlizumab) did not reduce the number of painful crises leading to a healthcare visit, and patients treated with Adakveo had slightly more painful crises on average, with a subsequent healthcare visit, over the first year of treatment, compared with those on placebo.

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Rich Horgan (R) with his late brother, Terry

Rich Hor­gan spear­head­ed a gene ther­a­py for his broth­er. The tri­al end­ed in tragedy, but the work con­tin­ues for more pa­tients

Rich Horgan’s quest to create a custom gene therapy for his brother, Terry, ended in tragedy. But Horgan doesn’t believe it’s the end of the story.

Terry, a 27-year-old patient with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, died last October just eight days after receiving the therapy in a clinical trial in which he was the only participant. The case raised questions about the safety of certain gene therapies and what would happen to other drug programs under a nonprofit that Horgan created, called Cure Rare Disease.

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Bio­phar­ma's 20 high­est-paid CEOs of 2022, each bring­ing in $20M+ pay­days

Even in a down year for much of the biopharma market, 20 CEOs brought in pay packages valued at more than $20 million, an Endpoints News analysis found.

Endpoints collected data on more than 350 CEO compensation packages, covering a wide range of pharma, biotech, and life sciences companies. All told, the 20 largest earners made over $725 million in 2022 — an average package of $36.4 million. Three brought in paydays over $50 million, and one CEO broke the $100 million mark.

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The 20(+2) un­der 40: Your guide to the next gen­er­a­tion of biotech lead­ers

This year’s list of 20 biotech leaders under the age of 40 includes a huge range of ambitions. Some of our honorees are planning to create the next big drug giant. Others are pushing the bounds of AI. One is working to revolutionize TB testing. All are compelling talents who are still young in age, but already far along in achievement.

And, as in years past, we went over. The 20 are actually 22 because of two double profiles that reflect how important teamwork is in the industry. As one of our honorees, Joe Illingworth of DJS Antibodies, told me in our interview, “It takes a village to raise a biotech.”

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