Pfiz­er $PFE may have made an abrupt ex­it out of the neu­ro­sciences R&D are­na, but it’s still in­ter­est­ed in back­ing the biotechs will­ing to nav­i­gate the ul­tra-high risk field.

De­nis Patrick

The phar­ma gi­ant to­day more than dou­bled its com­mit­ment to its ven­ture arm, adding $600 mil­lion in fire­pow­er and de­vot­ing $150 mil­lion of that for new rounds back­ing up­starts in the neu­ro­sciences world.

Pfiz­er Ven­tures has al­ready backed a small group of play­ers in the field: Aquin­nah, Au­ti­fony, Cor­texyme, MindIm­mune, MIS­SION, and Neu­ro­net­ics. The com­pa­ny al­so helped in the cre­ation, fund­ing and launch of the De­men­tia Dis­cov­ery Fund in 2015.

Now it will go deep­er, fo­cus­ing on neu­ro-de­gen­er­a­tion, neu­ro-in­flam­ma­tion and neu­ro-meta­bol­ic dis­or­ders. 

Pfiz­er spent bil­lions of dol­lars on at­tempts at de­vel­op­ing Alzheimer’s drugs, but nev­er got close to the fin­ish line. Its re­cent de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate its in­ter­nal fo­cus on neu­ro­sciences trig­gered a move to ax about 300 staffers. 

“By chang­ing the way we in­vest in neu­ro­science, we hope to sup­port an en­er­gized com­mu­ni­ty of biotech en­tre­pre­neurs who are pro­gress­ing the un­der­stand­ing of the mol­e­c­u­lar mech­a­nisms of neu­ro­log­ic dis­eases and help ad­vance po­ten­tial treat­ments for peo­ple with neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions,” said De­nis Patrick, the man­ag­ing part­ner of Pfiz­er Ven­tures.

Patrick, Las­z­lo Kiss, Mar­gi McLough­lin, Chris O’Don­nell and Niko­la Tr­bovic are join­ing the phar­ma gi­ant’s ven­ture team, which will al­so stay fo­cused on on­col­o­gy, in­flam­ma­tion and im­munol­o­gy, rare dis­ease, in­ter­nal med­i­cine and vac­cines.

I want to give readers a quick update on the most important part of our business model — premium subscriptions. We have some crucial financial goals we hope to achieve by the end of the year, and the team here in Lawrence is ready to ship some swag to kick off this limited December promotion.

We offer two premium plans — Enterprise for companies ($1,000/year, unlimited people), and Insider for individuals ($200/year). This month of December will be the last chance to enroll at the original rates — which have remained flat since we launched them in 2017.

The first girl in the trial came in with chronic diarrhea and the immune system of an untreated HIV patient. Born with a rare genetic disease that impeded her ability to make B and T cells, she had once been given a stem cell transplant but it didn’t take.  Back in the hospital, she was injected with a new experimental antibody and then given a new stem cell transplant. Soon, she gained weight. The diarrhea stopped.

→ Gastrointestinal disease-focused Phathom Pharmaceuticals has shaken up its leadership team. The company has tapped former Celgene exec Terrie Curran as CEO, succeeding David Socks, who is transitioning to interim CFO. Curran was president of Celgene’s global inflammation and immunology franchise — helping with the sale of Otezla for $13.4 billion to Amgen — and has held a previous stint at Merck. In addition to Curran, the company also welcomed former Omeros CMO Eckhard Leifke as CMO, ex-Celgene exec Joseph Hand as chief administrative officer, and former general counsel for Cyclerion Therapeutics Larry Miller as general counsel. They also replaced Chris Slavinsky on the board with Takeda exec Asit Parikh.

Just weeks after boasting head-to-head victories over first placebo and then J&J’s IL-23 contender Stelara in clearing psoriasis, the results are in for UCB’s last Phase III trial, in which bimekizumab went up against the world’s best-selling drug.

Only topline results are provided for today’s readout of the BE SURE study, so we won’t find out just how superior bimekizumab proved against Humira on the co-primary endpoints — standard scores known as PASI90 and IGA measuring the impact and severity of the disease — until a scientific conference in 2020.

Having made its marketing pitch to the EU regulator, Novartis on Thursday unveiled positive pivotal study data supporting the use of its inhaled asthma treatment.

The therapy, QMF149, consists of the long-acting beta-agonist, or LABA, called indacaterol acetate and the corticosteroid mometasone furoate. In the 2,216-patient, 52-week PALLADIUM study, asthma patients either received a medium or high dose of the Novartis therapy (150/160 μg; 150/320 μg) or mometasone furoate (MF) alone.