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 FDA’s Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee will meet next Tuesday to discuss whether Cytokinetics’ potential heart drug can safely reduce the risk of cardiovascular death and heart failure in patients with symptomatic chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction.

The drug, known as omecamtiv mecarbil and in development for more than 15 years, has seen mixed results, with a first Phase III readout from November 2020 hitting the primary endpoint of reducing the odds of hospitalization or other urgent care for heart failure by 8%. But it also missed a key secondary endpoint analysts had pegged as key to breaking into the market.

Add AbbVie to the list of pharma companies currently facing age discrimination allegations.

Pennsylvania resident Thomas Hesch filed suit against AbbVie on Wednesday, accusing the company of passing him over for promotions in favor of younger candidates.

Despite 30 years of pharma experience, “Hesch has consistently seen younger, less qualified employees promoted over him,” the complaint states.

The first batch of pivotal data on Autolus Therapeutics’ CAR-T is in, and execs are ready to plot a path to market.

With an overall remission rate of 70% at the interim analysis featuring 50 patients, the results set the stage for a BLA filing by the end of 2023, said CEO Christian Itin.

Perhaps more importantly — given that Autolus’ drug, obe-cel, is going after an indication that Gilead’s Tecartus is already approved for — the biotech highlighted “encouraging safety data” in the trial, with a low percentage of patients experiencing severe immune responses.