Leerink spot­lights No­var­tis’ late-stage stars plus one util­i­ty play­er — sug­gest­ing where it could make deals

Over the last year No­var­tis has been build­ing a rep as some­thing of a pen­ny pinch­er among the phar­ma gi­ants. It’s ex­tend­ed its rest­less search for new ef­fi­cien­cies in­to R&D, carv­ing out pock­ets of in­ves­ti­ga­tors as it cen­tral­izes its work in the big hubs. And it’s al­so adopt­ed a grow-your-own ap­proach to some of the ther­a­peu­tics it wants to have.

Case in point: PD-1.

In a re­view of its late-stage pipeline with Leerink’s Sea­mus Fer­nan­dez, com­pa­ny ex­ecs high­light­ed the phar­ma gi­ant’s PDR001, one of a num­ber of check­points aimed at the PD-(L)1 ax­is in can­cer drug de­vel­op­ment. Un­like Mer­ck, Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb, Roche, Pfiz­er and As­traZeneca, though, No­var­tis isn’t so much boast­ing about its stand­alone po­ten­tial as it is just bring­ing along a check­point of its own for the fu­ture com­bos that it plans to of­fer.

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