The first few years of Pas­cal So­ri­ot’s reign as CEO of As­traZeneca were tough to watch, at times. Set­backs were more com­mon than break­throughs, and its in­abil­i­ty to fin­ish its new head­quar­ters build­ing in Cam­bridge, UK, seemed em­blem­at­ic of its in­ner con­fu­sion. True, So­ri­ot had in­her­it­ed the worst pipeline in Big Phar­ma, but in­vestors fret­ted for some time when the com­pa­ny would get back on track.

Pas­cal So­ri­ot As­traZeneca

Through it all, the com­pa­ny steadi­ly built up key on­col­o­gy fran­chis­es, brought in Mer­ck as a ma­jor part­ner and nar­rowed its pipeline to fo­cus on bet­ter prospects. And So­ri­ot achieved his long­stand­ing promise to re­place steadi­ly dwin­dling rev­enues with a growth pic­ture.

Close to 2 years ago So­ri­ot re­cruit­ed José Basel­ga to run the on­col­o­gy side of the busi­ness while Mene Pan­ga­los steered the rest. And since the re­or­ga­ni­za­tion there have been high pro­file deals, new ap­provals and a repo­si­tion­ing for the drugs of the fu­ture.

To­mor­row I’ll be talk­ing with Basel­ga about the fu­ture of on­col­o­gy R&D at As­traZeneca at our 3rd an­nu­al UK bio­phar­ma sum­mit, co-host­ed by Nooman Haque at Sil­i­con Val­ley Bank. What are the com­bi­na­tions Basel­ga’s most in­trigued by? How did the Dai­ichi-Sankyo deals get done, and what do they tell us about the next round of pacts? And much more.

This year, be­cause we’re on Zoom, I’m look­ing for a more glob­al au­di­ence to check out this show­case on the Gold­en Tri­an­gle.

You’ll al­so have a chance to hear from Eliot Forster, Bahi­ja Jal­lal, John Bea­dle, Chris Mar­tin and Adri­an Raw­cliffe about UK R&D in a time of Covid-19, with some in­sid­er per­spec­tives on how this has been play­ing out from a transat­lantic per­spec­tive and where we go from here.

And Nooman will fol­low up with a look at how more in­creas­ing­ly porous in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial mar­kets have ben­e­fit­ed biotech in the UK, Eu­rope and be­yond. His guests: Anat Naschitz, Bri­an Sil­ver, Katie El­lias, Gra­ham Walm­s­ley and Stephanie Léouzon.

Please join us to­mor­row for the full slate, or choose any par­tic­u­lar part you’d like to tune in on. We’ll have time for ques­tions from the au­di­ence dur­ing each event. You can see the full sched­ule right here. I hope to see you there.

The co-owner of a Florida-based clinical research site pleaded guilty to lying to an FDA investigator during a 2017 inspection, revealing that she falsely portrayed part of a GlaxoSmithKline pediatric asthma study as legitimate, when in fact she knew that certain data had been falsified, the Department of Justice said Wednesday.

Three other employees — Yvelice Villaman Bencosme, Lisett Raventos and Maytee Lledo — previously pleaded guilty and were sentenced in connection with falsifying data associated with the trial at the CRO Unlimited Medical Research.

New research shows how generic drug companies can successfully market a limited number of approved indications for a brand name drug, prior to coming to market for all of the indications. But several recent court decisions have created a layer of uncertainty around these so-called “skinny” labels.

While courts have generally allowed generic manufacturers to use their statutorily permitted skinny-label approvals, last summer, a federal circuit court found that Teva Pharmaceuticals was liable for inducing prescribers and patients to infringe GlaxoSmithKline’s patents through advertising and marketing practices that suggested Teva’s generic, with its skinny label, could be employed for the patented uses.