Pfiz­er cuts five can­cer pro­grams; George Church en­gages Cel­lec­tis' TAL­EN tech to cre­ate virus-re­sis­tant hu­man cells

→ Pfiz­er $PFE has cut five of its on­col­o­gy pro­grams, ac­cord­ing to the phar­ma gi­ant’s pipeline up­date. The axed pro­grams in­clude a hand­ful of pre­clin­i­cal tri­als, and a cou­ple of bet­ter known late-stage ones. As ex­pect­ed, Pfiz­er shut down the Phase III tri­al of its VEGF in­hibitor In­ly­ta, which flopped ear­li­er this month when in­ves­ti­ga­tors flagged a dead end on out­comes. The phar­ma gi­ant al­so cut an­oth­er pro­gram for its can­cer drug Xtan­di, which was ac­quired through the $14B ac­qui­si­tion of Medi­va­tion in 2016. Pfiz­er has tried to ex­pand the mar­ket for the drug since first bag­ging it, but the tri­als have been hit or miss so far. The com­pa­ny out­lined pos­i­tive Phase III prostate can­cer da­ta in Sep­tem­ber, but dis­con­tin­ued a breast can­cer pro­gram months ear­li­er. Now, Pfiz­er is ax­ing Xtan­di’s Phase II pro­gram in liv­er can­cer.

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