Patrick Soon-Shiong (AP IMAGES)

Four years af­ter 'moon­shot' launch, Patrick Soon-Sh­iong has a big re­veal: a sin­gle pa­tient

Biotechs don’t typically unveil clinical data at the JP Morgan conference; it’s a gathering reserved for both the celebration and construction of deals, after all. But for Patrick Soon-Shiong, NantKwest chairman and CEO, it’s befitting.

Soon-Shiong, the inventor of Abraxane and controversial biotech billionaire, took the podium at JPM 2016 to launch a four-year moonshot to “subdue cancer by the start of the next decade.”

Now that 2020 is here, NantKwest is putting forth some new evidence for what it’s calling the “cancer breakthrough 2020”: one complete response in the expanded access portion of a Phase I trial.

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Hal Barron at Endpoints News' UKBIO 2019

Glax­o­SmithK­line CEO Em­ma Walm­s­ley is trig­ger­ing a New GSK R&D makeover, while shed­ding der­ma­tol­ogy

GSK execs announced Wednesday morning that it is setting up a 2-year program to prepare the company for its split in two — consumer healthcare and the R&D-focused outfit she and research chief Hal Barron promised to revamp 2 years ago.

A key part of that effort is a new R&D reorganization in which the vaccines group — traditionally separate inside the global organization — will integrate its work with the pharma team in order to orchestrate common research themes on both sides. And GSK is helping pay for the 2-year program with a plan to sell off non-core assets, starting with its dermatology drugs portfolio.

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Ken Frazier, AP Images

Lean­er and mean­er? Ken Fra­zier slims down Mer­ck to for­ti­fy po­si­tion in on­col­o­gy, vac­cines

As sales of Merck’s flagship therapy Keytruda grow from strength to strength — the New Jersey drugmaker is spinning off its women’s health, legacy brands, and biosimilar drugs into a new company.

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Helén Tuvesson

Ac­tive Biotech is back, with one last bid for the failed MS drug Te­va dis­card­ed

Laquinimod was the drug that was going to save Teva.

Over 14 years, the Israeli pharma started the compound on at least 15 clinical trials, 6 of them Phase III. They wanted it to replace the blockbuster multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone. But it failed late-stage study after late-stage study, not only in MS but also Huntington’s. And in 2018, after the fourth major whiff in 18 months, Teva returned the drug and all its rights back to sender: Sweden’s Active Bio.

Yes, Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day is ready to ink some deals. No, you won’t see him sweat it

A bevy of analysts turned out for Gilead’s Q4 call Tuesday night looking for some of the old sizzle about the future that used to excite them in the past. What they got was a lecture on steady improvement, sound judgment and proper dealmaking — along with a plateful of slightly disappointing numbers that left more than a few feeling a bit deflated by the end.

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Chi­na re­searchers tout in vit­ro da­ta for Gilead­'s an­tivi­ral against Wuhan virus — which they are try­ing to patent

There’s no definitive proof yet that Gilead’s remdesivir works as a treatment for 2019-nCov, but researchers in China clearly consider it promising enough to have applied for a patent on its use to combat the coronavirus virus outbreak stemming from Wuhan.

Amid worldwide vigilance over what many fear is becoming a pandemic, scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and National Engineering Research Center for the Emergency Drug said they have tested a total of seven drugs in vitro — and found remdesivir and the malaria treatment chloroquine most effective against the novel coronavirus.

Catalent CEO John Chiminski speaks at an Endpoints News event at the JP Morgan conference in San Francisco, January 2020 [Jeff Rumans, Endpoints News]

Catal­ent chief John Chimin­s­ki trig­gers a $315M-plus wa­ger on the boom­ing cell ther­a­py mar­ket now in the mak­ing

Last year Catalent CEO John Chiminski invested more than a billion dollars to expand the contract manufacturer ahead of an explosion of gene therapy trials and expected approvals. He’s starting this year with a $315 million wager on the booming cell therapy field.

Just ahead of the market open Monday, Chiminski $CTLT laid out to me the details of his decision to buy a transatlantic player that has been building up manufacturing capability in CAR-Ts, TCRs, TILs (tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes) and mesenchymal stem cell therapies.

In exchange for the $315 million in cash, he’s getting MaSTherCell Global and its 32,000 square-foot facility in Houston and a 25,000 square-foot facility in Gosselies, Belgium. The manufacturing operation is in the process of building out a 60,000-square-foot addition in Belgium set to go live next year, expanding beyond clinical supplies to the commercial realm.

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French can­cer-fo­cused mi­cro­bio­me play­er is flush with €18M Se­ries B in­jec­tion

Last year, the death of an immuno-compromised elderly patient in a fecal microbiota transplantation trial — due to a donation that contained a rare type of E. coli bacteria — sent shivers across the field. The incident marred an otherwise exploding field of drug development that backed replenishing the gut with good bacteria as a safe and effective means to fortify the immune system to fight disease.

Source: Inato.com

The Sanofi-part­nered start­up find­ing clin­i­cal tri­als for the 90%

Sanofi wanted help finding new trial sites, so a couple years ago they started talking with a startup down the street – who sent them to China.

The Paris-based startup, Inato, was building a platform to expand the pool of patients for clinical trials. Only instead of advertising or matching patients with trials, as other young companies have, Inato was trying to match pharma companies with the vast majority of hospitals that rarely, if ever, host a trial, even if they have patients better suited to a particular study than a marquee name hospital. Call them a trial platform for the 99% – or, by Inato’s calculations, the 90% of sites that are generally ignored in clinical research.

HIV vac­cine re­mains Holy Grail as Sanofi/GSK reg­i­men dis­ap­points in large study

An HIV vaccine regimen comprising experimental components supplied by Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline has been declared ineffective, underscoring the difficulty of this undertaking and raising the stakes for a mosaic vaccine being tested by a J&J-led coalition.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has stopped administering vaccines in the HVTN 702 trial after an interim review concluded that it didn’t prevent HIV. The Phase IIb/III trial enrolled 5,407 HIV-negative volunteers in South Africa.