In September, Novartis CTO Steffen Lang started hopping on video calls with his manufacturing team to talk, in a rare moment for any big pharma, about making other people’s drugs.

Despite being the third-largest drugmaker in the world, Novartis played a minor part in the pandemic response, having jettisoned its entire infectious disease portfolio years ago. But they tried to step in where they could, leading inter-company efforts to look for small molecule antivirals, lending their gene therapy facilities to an academic vaccine effort and, in an ultimately awkward move, donating copious amounts of hydroxychloroquine to the US government.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 158,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN

Idorsia’s long journey with clazosentan came to an abrupt “unexpected result” Monday morning with a Phase III flop.

The Swiss biopharma said the drug did not meet the main goal of the late-stage REACT study, conducted in the US, Canada and Europe since early 2019.

The 409-patient trial tested the intravenous drug’s ability to prevent complications due to delayed cerebral ischemia following aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH), in which blood vessels in the brain narrow and blood accumulates around the brain’s surface, which then dials up the pressure on the brain.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 158,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN

Five years into its big R&D revamp, Astellas says it’s time for a changing of the guard.

Kenji Yasukawa, who took over as president and CEO in 2018, will step down to become chairman of the board in April, making room for Naoki Okamura to take over. Okamura joined the company in 1986 and has served in a variety of finance, business and strategy roles, including most recently as chief strategy officer.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 158,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN

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.

With earnings seasons in full swing, we’ve listened in on all the calls so you don’t have to. But news is popping up from all corners, so make sure you check out our other updates, too.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 158,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN

Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) this week sent a letter to the head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services seeking an update on how and when new inflation-linked rebates will take effect for drugs that see major price spikes.

The newly signed Inflation Reduction Act requires manufacturers to pay a rebate to Medicare when they increase drug prices faster than the rate of inflation.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 158,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN

What does it take to pull off a $161 million biotech IPO these days?

In Structure Therapeutics’ case, it means having a star scientist co-founder paired with the computational drug discovery company Schrödinger, $198 million in private funding from blue-chip investors, almost six years of research work on G protein-coupled receptors and a slate of oral, small-molecule drugs, with an eye on the huge and growing diabetes and weight-loss market.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 158,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN