→ Dana-Far­ber is lend­ing a hand to lit­tle On­coSec’s nascent ef­fort to de­vel­op CAR-T ther­a­pies for sol­id tu­mor can­cers. The San Diego biotech has worked out an ex­clu­sive li­cens­ing deal with Wayne Maras­co — an ex­pert in an­ti­body en­gi­neer­ing — to ap­ply his method of link­ing two sin­gle-chain vari­able frag­ment (scFv) in a bis­pe­cif­ic CAR-T such that the T cells are on­ly ac­ti­vat­ed when both tar­gets are en­gaged, there­by lim­it­ing off-tu­mor tox­i­c­i­ty. On­coSec’s fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tion in the re­search, which in­volves test­ing the ex­per­i­men­tal treat­ment so­lo and in com­bi­na­tion with Ta­vo in triple-neg­a­tive breast can­cer, will be “mod­est” and spread over sev­er­al years, CEO Daniel O’Con­nor said.

→ Af­ter win­ning the FDA nod for low blood platelet count (throm­bo­cy­tope­nia) in adults with chron­ic liv­er dis­ease (CLD) who are sched­uled to un­der­go a med­ical or den­tal pro­ce­dure, the la­bel of Do­va Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal’s Doptelet on Thurs­day was ex­pand­ed to in­clude pa­tients with chron­ic im­mune throm­bo­cy­tope­nia (ITP) who have had an in­suf­fi­cient re­sponse to a pre­vi­ous treat­ment. The com­pa­ny’s shares $DO­VA leapt about 27.5% to $13.50 in morn­ing trad­ing. The FDA’s en­dorse­ment comes about a week af­ter Eu­ro­pean reg­u­la­tors al­so backed the drug for use in se­vere throm­bo­cy­tope­nia in adult pa­tients with CLD who are sched­uled to un­der­go an in­va­sive pro­ce­dure. Mean­while, late-stage da­ta from a study eval­u­at­ing the drug’s use in chemother­a­py-in­duced throm­bo­cy­tope­nia are ex­pect­ed in the first half of 2020.

→ The re­cent­ly-pub­lic Ver­ri­ca Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals‘ $VR­CA ex­per­i­men­tal drug, VP-102, has cleared a mid-stage study in pa­tients with com­mon warts. The drug’s “ef­fi­ca­cy and tol­er­a­bil­i­ty has been fur­ther con­firmed with the pos­i­tive Phase II COVE-1 tri­al in com­mon warts, and is now de-risked in an ad­di­tion­al in­di­ca­tion. We be­lieve this pro­vides ad­di­tion­al (and not mod­eled) up­side for VR­CA as our val­u­a­tion tar­gets are based pure­ly on VP-102 in mol­lus­cum con­ta­gio­sum which re­mains on track for a po­ten­tial H2:2020 launch,” Cowen an­a­lysts wrote in a note. The com­pa­ny said it is on track to sub­mit an ap­pli­ca­tion to mar­ket the drug for pa­tients with mol­lus­cum con­ta­gio­sum — a vi­ral skin in­fec­tion some­times called wa­ter warts — lat­er this year.

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.