No­var­tis un­veils a new glob­al R&D struc­ture, cre­at­ing cen­ters in Cam­bridge, MA and Basel


No­var­tis is un­veil­ing some big new changes to its R&D or­ga­ni­za­tion to­day, fo­cus­ing heav­i­ly on new re­search op­er­a­tions based in Cam­bridge, MA as well as Basel while shut­ter­ing two units in Chi­na and Switzer­land and re­lo­cat­ing an­oth­er from Sin­ga­pore to the Bay Area.

Hot on the heels of its stun­ning de­ci­sion to shut down its cell and gene ther­a­py group while lay­ing off 120, the com­pa­ny plans to tell em­ploy­ees at town hall meet­ings lat­er to­day that it is es­tab­lish­ing a new ear­ly-stage op­er­a­tion along with the cre­ation of two new re­search cen­ters. Here’s a quick look at the over­all plan as out­lined by No­var­tis in re­sponse to a query from End­points News:

— The phar­ma gi­ant is set­ting up an ear­ly dis­cov­ery re­search group in Basel and Cam­bridge, MA, which it says will be “in­te­grat­ed with NI­BR’s drug dis­cov­ery teams around the world.” The Chem­i­cal Bi­ol­o­gy and Ther­a­peu­tics team will merge two ex­ist­ing teams and fo­cus on “har­ness­ing the pow­er of chem­i­cal bi­ol­o­gy and oth­er cut­ting edge tech­nolo­gies such as CRISPR, DNA-en­cod­ed li­braries and tar­get­ed pro­tein degra­da­tion to dis­cov­er new drug tar­gets. CBT will al­so in­clude teams fo­cused on path­way bi­ol­o­gy and high through­put screen­ing.”

— Two new “cen­ters of ex­cel­lence” for bio­ther­a­peu­tics re­search in Basel, Switzer­land and Cam­bridge, MA, USA will “ex­plore new di­rec­tions for de­liv­er­ing bi­o­log­ic ther­a­pies.” And the phar­ma gi­ant says that the de­vel­op­ment of those two cen­ters will force the clo­sure of a group in Shang­hai as well ES­BAT­e­ch, a bi­o­log­ics unit based in Schlieren, Switzer­land. Twen­ty to 25 new po­si­tions will be opened in the bi­o­log­ics cen­ter of ex­cel­lence in Basel.

— No­var­tis is al­so cre­at­ing a new re­search group fo­cus­ing on dis­cov­er­ing new med­i­cines for res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases while re­lo­cat­ing the No­var­tis In­sti­tute for Trop­i­cal Dis­eases (NITD) from Sin­ga­pore to Emeryville, CA.

Al­con ac­quired ES­BAT­e­ch and its an­ti­body frag­ment tech un­der the watch­ful eye of No­var­tis, which was com­plet­ing its own deal to ac­quire Al­con, back in 2009. That deal cost $150 mil­lion up­front plus an­oth­er $439 mil­lion in mile­stones. The group re­port­ed­ly has 73 staffers who are now be­ing axed.

“The Shang­hai Bi­o­log­ics group that is clos­ing has 18 peo­ple,” a spokesper­son for No­var­tis tells me via email. ” The re­lo­ca­tion of NITD pro­grams and op­er­a­tions to Emeryville will af­fect 84 peo­ple in Sin­ga­pore. In ad­di­tion to the 20-25 jobs that will be added in Basel for bi­o­log­ics, we will add jobs in Emeryville for NITD and in Cam­bridge for the Res­pi­ra­to­ry group. De­tails on Cam­bridge and Emeryville jobs are still be­ing worked out.”

No­var­tis still has big plans for Shang­hai, where it’s been build­ing a ma­jor R&D op­er­a­tion in the grow­ing Asian biotech hub.

NI­BR has a fa­cil­i­ty in Emeryville, just north of Oak­land in the Bay Area. And a whole group of Big Phar­mas have been con­cen­trat­ing their forces in the big re­search hubs like the San Fran­cis­co area, in­clud­ing Mer­ck and As­traZeneca. Cam­bridge, MA, mean­while, has al­so ben­e­fit­ed great­ly from the glob­al mi­gra­tion of Big Phar­ma to the big hubs, while Basel is home to the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny.

No­var­tis has been fo­cused on a shake­up for much of the year, dat­ing back to its de­ci­sion to carve out an on­col­o­gy group in May. No­var­tis shocked the 400 staffers at its cell and gene ther­a­py group re­cent­ly when it un­ex­pect­ed­ly an­nounced plans to lay off 120 and in­te­grate the re­main­ing play­ers in the can­cer re­search op­er­a­tions. The com­pa­ny is known for one of the biggest re­search bud­gets in bio­phar­ma, spend­ing $9 bil­lion last year on R&D. But it’s al­so well known for look­ing for greater ef­fi­cien­cies wher­ev­er they can be found.

That can make job se­cu­ri­ty a risky prospect at No­var­tis.

“Mov­ing the (No­var­tis In­sti­tute for Trop­i­cal Dis­eases) is re­al­ly in­tend­ed to em­pow­er the re­search through the strength of col­lab­o­ra­tive prox­im­i­ty,” NI­BR chief Jay Brad­ner told the lo­cal Sin­ga­pore press. No­var­tis doesn’t like to sim­ply fire work­ers, of­fer­ing some the chance to re­lo­cate or ap­ply for oth­er po­si­tions. But clear­ing the hur­dle be­tween Sin­ga­pore and the Bay Area couldn’t be easy.

This isn’t the first time that No­var­tis switched up its glob­al R&D struc­ture, and it like­ly won’t be the last. Big Phar­ma got re­al se­ri­ous about cut­ting back the head count and out­sourc­ing work sev­er­al years ago, and prac­ti­cal­ly all of them have tak­en the ax to their re­search or­ga­ni­za­tions. Giv­en the ane­mic flow of new drug ap­provals this year, there’s no rea­son to be­lieve that the pres­sure be­hind these changes is de­clin­ing at all.

Image courtesy of The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson.

Pro­tect­ing the glob­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem – what’s at stake?

We are living in a new era of healthcare that is rapidly advancing progress impacting patient outcomes and experiences. We’ve seen a remarkable pace of transformational innovation, applied research, and advanced clinical development over the last decade.

Despite this tremendous progress, there is much more work to be done, and patients are counting on us – now more than ever – to continue that momentum. At the heart of our industry is a focus on developing and delivering medicines for some of the world’s most challenging diseases, including those that have few or no effective treatments today.

Roger Perl­mut­ter lines up deals, fresh fund­ing at Eikon; Sec­ond RSV vac­cine ap­proved; Sev­er­al biotechs flash­ing red; and more

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As you come back to our website this weekend for ASCO news, don’t forget to check out our updated event lineup at BIO, which will cover everything from the current state of VC investing in biotech to top pharma R&D chiefs discussing how to make pipeline decisions.

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Full TIG­IT da­ta from Gilead, Ar­cus show low­er PFS rates than De­cem­ber read­out: #AS­CO23

CHICAGO — Gilead and Arcus unveiled a fuller snapshot of a Phase II study testing their experimental cancer immunotherapy combo that showed lower progression-free survival rates than its previous update, results that are likely to spark further debate over the closely-watched clinical trial.

Last December, the anti-TIGIT/anti-PD-L1 combo, positioned as a first-line treatment for non-small cell lung cancer, recorded data that drew mixed reactions. The latest analysis, presented Saturday afternoon at ASCO, included only a handful more patients than the previous update, but PFS rates fell — in one cohort by nearly three months.

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Bris­tol My­er­s' Op­di­vo keeps can­cer at bay in more lym­phoma pa­tients than Seagen's Ad­cetris in PhI­II: #AS­CO23

CHICAGO — In a study pitting Seagen’s Adcetris against Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdivo in newly diagnosed patients with advanced classic Hodgkin lymphoma, a greater proportion of those who received Opdivo saw no cancer growth at one year compared to those who got Adcetris.

In addition, patients in the Opdivo arm of the Phase III trial reported reduced toxicities, according to lead investigator Alex Herrera, a hematologist-oncologist at City of Hope’s cancer cancer in Duarte, CA. Notably, the trial included more than 200 children across both arms. Generally, more than half of children with advanced Hodgkin lymphoma receive radiation therapy, but in this trial, dubbed SWOG S1826, only a handful of patients in the two arms received radiotherapy, sparing many children from long-term side effects of radiation.

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Servi­er’s vo­rasi­denib stalls pro­gres­sion of brain can­cer by 61% in piv­otal PhI­II IN­DI­GO study: #AS­CO23

An experimental pill from Servier Pharmaceuticals showed potentially practice-changing results in a narrow group of brain cancer patients, cutting the risk of their cancers progressing by 61%, according to a late-stage clinical trial.

The drug, vorasidenib, is a precision medicine that only works in certain people whose cancer carries mutations in one of two genes called IDH1/2. Doctors hope that the therapy will delay the need for chemotherapy or radiation, which are often used to combat relapses in patients who’ve previously undergone surgery to remove brain tumors.

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Peter van de Sande, Synaffix CEO

Lon­za shells out $107M cash to snap up Synaf­fix and its ADC plat­form

After lining up a string of partnerships over the years, Dutch antibody-drug conjugate specialist Synaffix has found a new home: Lonza, the contract development and manufacturing giant.

Lonza is paying about $107 million (€100 million) in cash to acquire Synaffix, with up to $64 million (€60 million) in “additional performance-based consideration” on the table. Synaffix’s ADC tech platform will now become part of Lonza’s offering for biopharma clients, lending its bioconjugate technologies to not just ADCs but also targeted gene therapy, immune cell engagers and other applications.

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As­traZeneca tri­al shows mod­est ben­e­fit in ovar­i­an can­cer, but doc­tors say it's hard to ap­ply find­ings: #AS­CO23

CHICAGO — Adding AstraZeneca’s Imfinzi and Lynparza to the treatment regimen for patients with advanced ovarian cancer and no BRCA mutation extended progression-free survival (PFS) by five months, according to interim data released at the ASCO annual meeting Saturday morning.

However, the design of the Phase III study obscures how much Imfinzi is contributing to the PFS extension, doctors said, making it difficult to apply the findings to clinical practice.

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Keytru­da be­fore and af­ter lung can­cer surgery cuts re­lapse risk by 42%, but doesn’t im­prove sur­vival: #AS­CO23

CHICAGO — Merck has found partial success with its latest effort to more aggressively treat earlier stages of lung cancer.

On Saturday the pharma giant announced results from a large trial in which patients received Merck’s immunotherapy Keytruda plus chemotherapy before surgeons removed their tumors, followed by another course of Keytruda afterward.

The Phase III study, called KEYNOTE-671, enrolled 800 people with the early stages of the most common kind of lung cancer: non-small cell lung cancer, or NSCLC. Everyone got chemo before surgery, and half also got Keytruda before and after. At two years, 62.4% of those who got Keytruda kept their cancer at bay, compared to 40.6% who got a placebo.

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Grail’s blood test charts path for di­ag­nos­ing pa­tients sus­pect­ed of hav­ing can­cer in large study: #AS­CO23

Grail’s vision is simple but bold. The blood testing company has long held that people are often diagnosed with cancer too late. If seemingly healthy people were screened for early signs of the disease before symptoms appear, they may be able to get more effective treatments that nip cancer in the bud.

That premise is the basis of Grail’s commercial blood test, Galleri, which searches for the genetic fingerprints of cancer in the blood. The test, launched in 2021, reaped $55 million in sales last year, but now the company is setting its sights on a new market: patients suspected of having cancer due to symptoms such as abdominal pain, rectal bleeding or unexplained weight loss. Rather than administering expensive scans or conducting invasive biopsies right away, Grail hopes doctors will consider a simple blood test.

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