Sobered by mount­ing costs, Dy­navax $DVAX last month made the de­ci­sion to fo­cus all its re­sources on its 2017-ap­proved he­pati­tis B vac­cine Hep­lisav-B, which ri­vals and su­per­sedes the ef­fi­ca­cy and con­ve­nience pro­file of GSK’s $GSK es­tab­lished En­ger­ix-B. The Cal­i­for­nia-based com­pa­ny will be on the look­out for an­oth­er com­peti­tor — VBI Vac­cines, which on Mon­day un­veiled late-stage da­ta on its hep B vac­cine: Sci-B-Vac.

Sci-B-Vac, which has al­ready se­cured ap­proval in Is­rael and 10 oth­er coun­tries, is in Phase III de­vel­op­ment in North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope. It is en­gi­neered to mim­ic all three sur­face anti­gens of the hep B virus to in­duce a po­tent im­mune re­sponse and is be­ing de­vel­oped to work at low­er dos­es than ex­ist­ing hep B vac­cines.

VBI on Mon­day broke out da­ta from the PRO­TECT study, in which 1,607 sub­jects aged 18 years and old­er were ei­ther giv­en a three-dose course of Sci-B-Vac (10 µg) or a three-dose course of En­ger­ix-B (20 µg).

Sci-B-Vac failed to show that two dos­es of the drug were equal­ly ef­fec­tive as three dos­es of En­ger­ix-B in the study — a key sec­ondary end­point. In­vestors were not im­pressed, and the Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts-based com­pa­ny’s shares $VBIV cratered 58% tak­ing VBI in­to pen­ny stock ter­ri­to­ry at 81 cents be­fore the open­ing bell on Mon­day.

Mean­while, the VBI vac­cine was found to be as pro­tec­tive as En­ger­ix-B at the end of the third vac­ci­na­tion — meet­ing the main goal of the study. In fact, da­ta showed that the rate of sero­pro­tec­tion (an an­ti­body re­sponse ca­pa­ble of pre­vent­ing in­fec­tion) — was 91.4% for Sci-B-Vac-treat­ed sub­jects, ver­sus 76.5% for En­ger­ix-B — a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence.

In ad­di­tion, the sero­pro­tec­tion rate (SPR) in sub­jects aged 45 and over was 89.4% for Sci-B-Vac, ver­sus 73.1% for En­ger­ix-B af­ter the third vac­ci­na­tion — meet­ing the co-pri­ma­ry end­point. It al­so cleared oth­er sec­ondary goals in sub-analy­ses strat­i­fied by age, gen­der, body mass in­dex, di­a­bet­ic sta­tus and smok­ing sta­tus.

Jeff Bax­ter VBI

Da­ta from an­oth­er late-stage tri­al, CON­STANT, com­par­ing Sci-B-Vac and En­ger­ix-B is ex­pect­ed by the end of 2019. Pend­ing the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of CON­STANT, VBI is on to sub­mit mar­ket­ing ap­pli­ca­tions in the U.S., Eu­rope, and Cana­da next year, com­pa­ny chief Jeff Bax­ter said on Mon­day.

Hep B is trans­mit­ted through con­tact with blood and bod­i­ly flu­ids of an in­fect­ed per­son and is a high­ly in­fec­tious virus, 50 to 100 times more in­fec­tious than HIV — even slight laps­es in in­fec­tion con­trol can re­sult in pa­tient-to-pa­tient trans­mis­sion. Since the ear­ly 1990’s the Unit­ed States has im­ple­ment­ed vac­ci­na­tion pro­grams in new­born chil­dren, but those born be­fore re­main sus­cep­ti­ble. CDC da­ta now sug­gests 95% per­cent of new hep B in­fec­tions in the Unit­ed States oc­cur in adults, as there is no stan­dard­ized sys­tem for vac­ci­nat­ing peo­ple af­ter school age, and par­tic­u­lar­ly since spikes in in­jec­tion drug use may be lead­ing to acute out­breaks.

Af­ter be­ing linked to a string of in­ex­plic­a­ble safe­ty is­sues, Hep­lisav-B was fi­nal­ly ap­proved in No­vem­ber 2017. De­spite its check­ered path to the fin­ish line, the vac­cine’s ef­fi­ca­cy and con­ve­nience pro­file su­per­sedes En­ger­ix-B.

So­cial im­age: Shut­ter­stock

Novo Nordisk’s priority review voucher on oral semaglutide has paid off. The FDA approval for the GLP-1 drug hit late Friday morning, around six months after the NDA filing.

Rybelsus will be the first GLP-1 pill to enter the type 2 diabetes market — a compelling offering that analysts have pegged as a blockbuster drug with sales estimates ranging from $2 billion to $5 billion.

Ozempic, the once-weekly injectable formulation of semaglutide, brought in around $552 million (DKK 3.75 billion) in the first half of 2019.

There are two updates on the lawsuit against Purdue Pharma over its role in fueling the opioid epidemic, as the Sackler family threatens to walk away from their pledge to pay out $3 billion if a bankruptcy judge does not stop outstanding state lawsuits against them. At the same time, the company has asked permission to pay millions in bonuses to select employees.

Purdue filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy this week as part of its signed resolution to over 2,000 lawsuits. The deal would see the Sackler family that owns Purdue give $3 billion from their personal wealth and the company turned into a trust committed to curbing and reversing overdoses.

The sign is still there, a quaint reminder of whitewashed concrete not 5 miles from Genentech’s sprawling, chrome-and-glass campus: South Francisco The Industrial City. 

The city keeps the old sign, first erected in 1923, as a tourist site and a kind of civic memento to the days it packed meat, milled lumber and burned enough steel to earn the moniker “Smokestack of the Peninsula.” But the real indication of where you are and how much has changed both in San Francisco and in the global economy since a couple researchers and investors rented out an empty warehouse 40 years ago comes in a far smaller blue sign, resembling a Rotary Club post, off the highway: South San Francisco, The Birthplace of Biotech.

While Novartis painstakingly works to mop up the stench of the data manipulation scandal associated with its expensive gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) Zolgensma— rival Biogen is attempting to expand the use of its SMA therapy, Spinraza. 

The US drugmaker $BIIB secured US approval for Spinraza for use in the often fatal genetic disease in 2016. The approval covered a broad range of patients with infantile-onset (most likely to develop Type 1) SMA. 

After months of buzz from both sides of the aisle, Speaker Nancy Pelosi will today introduce her plan to allow the federal government to negotiate prices for 250 prescription drugs, setting up a showdown with a pharmaceutical industry working overtime to prevent it.

The need to limit drug prices is a rare point of agreement between President Trump and Democrats, although the president has yet to comment on the proposal and will likely face pressure to back a more conservative option or no bill at all. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is reportedly lobbying his fellow party members on a more modest proposal he negotiated with Democratic Senator Ron Wyden in July.