In­cyte fi­nal­ly has some good news to share about one drug it’s dis­cov­ered that’s not Jakafi — al­beit one that doesn’t be­long to it any­more.

FDA reg­u­la­tors have ac­cept­ed cap­ma­tinib, an or­phan and “break­through” MET in­hibitor, for pri­or­i­ty re­view. The hon­or tech­ni­cal­ly goes to No­var­tis, which li­censed world­wide de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion rights to the drug back in 2009.

But that didn’t stop In­cyte from brag­ging about it in a re­lease, re­mind­ing in­vestors that if every­thing goes well, it’s el­i­gi­ble for $500 mil­lion-plus in mile­stones as well as roy­al­ties up to 14% of glob­al sales.

Shav­ing four months off the re­view time­line — as­sum­ing there aren’t hic­cups — helps en­sure that No­var­tis can score an ap­proval with­in this year. The phar­ma gi­ant had des­ig­nat­ed cap­ma­tinib (for­mer­ly INC280) as one of four ma­jor launch­es of 2020, pre­dict­ing a block­buster fu­ture for a drug ini­tial­ly aimed at a sub­type of non-small cell lung can­cer.

NSCLC pa­tients who har­bor a MET ex­on-14 skip­ping mu­ta­tion cur­rent­ly have no ap­proved tar­get­ed ther­a­py. A No­var­tis-spon­sored Phase II tri­al showed that cap­ma­tinib in­duced an over­all re­sponse rate of 67.9% among treat­ment-naïve pa­tients (du­ra­tion of re­sponse 11.14 months) and 40.6% among pre­vi­ous­ly treat­ed ones (DOR 9.72 months).

Those 97 pa­tients had EGFR wild­type, ALK-neg­a­tive tu­mors, and took 400 mg cap­ma­tinib tablets twice a day.

“ME­Tex14 mu­ta­tions oc­cur in 3-4% of new­ly di­ag­nosed ad­vanced NSCLC cas­es and is a rec­og­nized onco­genic dri­ver,” No­var­tis not­ed in a state­ment.

Mer­ck KGaA and Pfiz­er al­so an­gling for this un­tapped niche; both have been grant­ed break­through ther­a­py des­ig­na­tions, though theirs on­ly cov­er sec­ond-line ther­a­py fol­low­ing plat­inum-based chemo. While tepo­tinib from the Ger­man drug­mak­er was en­gi­neered as a se­lec­tive MET in­hibitor, the drug Pfiz­er has put for­ward is Xalko­ri, orig­i­nal­ly tar­get­ed at ALK and ROS1 mu­ta­tions.

Mean­while, in Chi­na, Chi-Med is al­so test­ing As­traZeneca’s MET in­hibitor, savoli­tinib, in a Phase II reg­is­tra­tional tri­al among pa­tients who have pro­gressed fol­low­ing pri­or sys­temic ther­a­py or are un­able to re­ceive chemo.

A com­pan­ion di­ag­nos­tic will like­ly be key to the adop­tion of any of these treat­ments. No­var­tis has teamed up with Foun­da­tion Med­i­cine — now a Roche sub­sidiary — to in­clude tu­mor tis­sue and liq­uid biop­sy di­ag­nos­tics on its flag­ship prod­ucts.

One Spanish biotech is beefing up its plasma therapy operations, and on Friday, it announced that it’s doing so in a billion-dollar deal.

Grifols is now the largest shareholder of Biotest, a company valued at more than $1.8 billion. By teaming up, the two will try to increase the number of plasma therapies available and increase patient access around the world, Grifols said in a press release.

The company did so by acquiring holding company Tiancheng Pharmaceutical, the Germany-based owner of nearly 90% of Biotest shares, for nearly $1.27 billion. Grifols now owns nearly 90% of Biotest voting rights and almost 45% of the total share capital of Biotest.

The FDA released briefing documents this week from the agency and Pfizer each outlining their arguments for today’s Covid-19 booster shot adcomm, but one thing conspicuously missing was the question on which panel members would be voting. But late Thursday night, regulators published that question.

Adcomm members will be asked whether or not the safety and efficacy data from Pfizer/BioNTech’s original Phase III study “support approval” of a booster shot at least six months after the second dose in individuals older than 16. The question notably excludes the real-world data from Israel and other analyses that Pfizer and the Biden administration had said would be a centerpiece of their arguments for boosters.

→ Last week we told you about the CMO revolving door at ADC Therapeutics, as Joseph Camardo replaced the departing Jay Feingold. The next opportunity for Feingold in the CMO slot has opened up at antibody-drug conjugate and mAb developer Pyxis Oncology, which has added several new execs and scientific advisory board members in recent months, including ex-Immunovant CFO Pamela Yanchik Connealy. Before his tenure at ADC, Feingold was Daiichi Sankyo’s VP of US medical affairs and chairman of the Global Medical Affairs Oversight Committee. Within weeks in March, Pyxis struck a licensing deal with Pfizer for two of its ADCs and raked in $152 million from a Series B round.