When Pro­tal­ix Bio­Ther­a­peu­tics re­port­ed its 2018 re­sults this March, it spent much of its time talk­ing up the po­ten­tial of nab­bing an ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval for its Fab­ry dis­ease treat­ment pe­gu­ni­gal­si­dase al­fa.

Weeks lat­er, the Is­raeli biotech — which has an un­ap­pe­tiz­ing pen­ny stock val­u­a­tion $PLX — and part­ner Chiesi are go­ing for it, op­ti­mistic af­ter months of dis­cus­sion with the FDA. The BLA fil­ing is sched­uled for Q1 2020.

Like Shire’s Re­pla­gal, which it’s be­ing com­pared against in a pair of late-stage tri­als, pe­gu­ni­gal­si­dase al­fa (or PRX-102) is an en­zyme re­place­ment ther­a­py de­signed to break down the ex­cess fat mol­e­cules build­ing up in Fab­ry pa­tients. Syn­the­sized from plants, this par­tic­u­lar re­com­bi­nant al­pha-galac­tosi­dase A en­zyme can be in­fused every four weeks in­stead of Re­pla­gal’s two.

An ini­tial glimpse of the Phase III study showed that high lev­els of the drug cir­cu­lat­ed in the blood­stream af­ter 28 days, with a mean con­cen­tra­tion 138 ng/mL among 15 evalu­able pa­tients. In con­trast, Fab­razyme — an­oth­er ERT de­vel­oped by Sanofi Gen­zyme — had his­tor­i­cal­ly shown a mean con­cen­tra­tion of 20 ng/mL at 10 hours post in­fu­sion, HC Wain­wright an­a­lysts added in a Feb­ru­ary note.

But those are not the on­ly com­peti­tors Pro­tal­ix will face. Am­i­cus has trav­eled down its own wind­ing path to an ap­proval for Galafold, an oral drug that works by ad­dress­ing some mis­fold­ed α-GalA en­zymes. New ther­a­pies to in­tro­duce healthy copies of the GLA gene, which en­codes for the en­zyme, are com­ing up in the pipeline, with a no­table ef­fort from Avro­bio.

“This reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval path is a sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ment as it means that we can start the ap­pli­ca­tion process and po­ten­tial­ly at­tain mar­ket ap­proval sig­nif­i­cant­ly ear­li­er than the ini­tial plan of da­ta from our on­go­ing phase III BAL­ANCE clin­i­cal tri­al,” CEO Moshe Manor said in a state­ment. “We plan to con­tin­ue the BAL­ANCE study to fur­ther strength­en the pro­file of pe­gu­ni­gal­si­dase al­fa.”

Chiesi holds the US rights to the drug from a deal that looped in $760 mil­lion in reg­u­la­to­ry and com­mer­cial mile­stones. Pro­tal­ix cur­rent­ly has one ap­proved prod­uct for Gauch­er dis­ease, mar­ket­ed by Pfiz­er.

That 2012 ap­proval, though, has done lit­tle to lift Pro­tal­ix’s suf­fer­ing stock af­ter a con­found­ing de­ci­sion in 2007 to price a sec­ondary of­fer­ing at an 85%. Shares plum­met­ed from $35 to $5 overnight and has bare­ly gone over $10 since, trad­ing way be­low $1 these days.

Blue­bird bio $BLUE has un­veiled its price for the new­ly ap­proved gene ther­a­py Zyn­te­glo (Lenti­Glo­bin), which came as a big sur­prise. And it wasn’t the on­ly un­ex­pect­ed twist in to­day’s sto­ry.

With some an­a­lysts bet­ting on a $900,000 price for the β-tha­lassemia treat­ment in Eu­rope, where reg­u­la­tors pro­vid­ed a con­di­tion­al ear­ly OK, blue­bird CEO Nick Leschly said Fri­day morn­ing that the pa­tients who are suc­cess­ful­ly treat­ed with their drug over 5 years will be charged twice that — $1.8 mil­lion — on the con­ti­nent. That makes this drug the sec­ond most ex­pen­sive ther­a­py on the plan­et, just be­hind No­var­tis’ new­ly ap­proved Zol­gens­ma at $2.1 mil­lion, with an­a­lysts still wait­ing to see what kind of pre­mi­um can be had in the US.

Re­gen­eron’s close­ly-watched bis­pe­cif­ic con­tin­ues to ring up high re­sponse rates

Re­gen­eron’s high-pro­file bis­pe­cif­ic REGN1979 is back in the spot­light at the Eu­ro­pean Hema­tol­ogy As­so­ci­a­tion sci­en­tif­ic con­fab. And while the stel­lar num­bers we saw at ASH have erod­ed some­what as more blood can­cer pa­tients are eval­u­at­ed, the re­sponse rates for this CD3/CD20 drug re­main high.

A to­tal of 13 out of 14 fol­lic­u­lar lym­phomas re­spond­ed to the drug, a 93% ORR, down from 100% at the last read­out. In 10 out of 14, there was a com­plete re­sponse. In dif­fuse large B-cell lym­phoma the re­sponse rate was 57% among pa­tients treat­ed at the 80 mg to 160 mg dose range. They were all com­plete re­spons­es. And 2 of these Cars were for pa­tients who had failed CAR-T ther­a­py.

Em­bat­tled UK fund man­ag­er Neil Wood­ford — who has con­tro­ver­sial­ly blocked in­vestors from pulling out from his flag­ship fund to stem the blood­let­ting, af­ter a slew of dis­ap­point­ed in­vestors fled fol­low­ing a se­ries of sour bets — is now pay­ing the price for his ac­tions via an in­vestor ex­o­dus on an­oth­er fund.

Har­g­reaves Lans­down, which has in the past sold and pro­mot­ed the Wood­ford funds via its re­tail in­vest­ment plat­form, has re­port­ed­ly with­drawn £45 mil­lion — its en­tire po­si­tion — from the in­vest­ment man­ag­er’s In­come Fo­cus Fund.

→ Ab­b­Vie is tout­ing new pos­i­tive da­ta com­par­ing their ag­ing block­buster Hu­mi­ra with their hoped-for block­buster upadac­i­tinib. Over 48 weeks a larg­er pro­por­tion of pa­tients tak­ing the ex­per­i­men­tal drug ex­pe­ri­enced clin­i­cal re­mis­sion than in the con­trol arm with Hu­mi­ra. Their drug brought in $20 bil­lion last year, top­ping the scales in the num­ber 1 slot.

→ Gilead has turned to Van­cou­ver-based Ab­Cellera for its lat­est dis­cov­ery deal. Ab­Cellera will use its know-how in “sin­gle-cell screen­ing of nat­ur­al im­mune sources” to find an­ti­body can­di­dates for Gilead to pur­sue in the in­fec­tious dis­ease field. The deal in­cludes an up­front and mile­stones.

The Wash­ing­ton Post man­aged to whip up the quick­est in­dus­try con­sen­sus I’ve ever seen that one of its re­porters was pur­vey­ing overblown non­sense with a sto­ry that Pfiz­er was sit­ting on da­ta sug­gest­ing that En­brel could be an ef­fec­tive treat­ment for Alzheimer’s. 

In cov­er­ing that bit of an­ti-Big Phar­ma fan­ta­sy — there are lots of rea­sons to go af­ter phar­ma, but this piece was lu­di­crous — I not­ed com­ments in the sto­ry from some promi­nent peo­ple in the field crit­i­ciz­ing Pfiz­er for not pub­lish­ing the da­ta. I sin­gled out Rudy Tanzi at Har­vard and then ap­plied some added crit­i­cism for the things he’s done to hype — in my opin­ion — high­ly ques­tion­able as­sump­tions. You can see it in the link.