When Merck announced this month that its Covid-19 pill cut newly diagnosed patients’ risk of being hospitalized by 50%, researchers and analysts hoped that other pills would soon prove similarly effective. They paid particular attention to two drugs from Pfizer and Roche.

But on Tuesday, Roche and its biotech partner, Atea, announced that their antiviral had failed a key interim test.

In a Phase II trial, AT-527 didn’t reduce the amount of virus in mild to moderate Covid-19 patients any more than a placebo pill did. That was true for both the patients who received a high dose and those who received the low dose.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 154,100+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN

When Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk tweeted this weekend, “Just a note to thank advertisers for returning to Twitter,” he likely wasn’t talking about big pharma companies. The vast majority of the top spending pharma advertisers had not returned last week, according to updated tracking data Pathmatic for Endpoints News.

Only three pharma advertisers spent any money at all, which is about the same as the past several weeks. AstraZeneca rejoined the active advertiser list, although at $700 spent hardly worth a personal Musk expression of gratitude. GSK remained active with $3,500 spent ad much lower than its previous spending, according to the Pathmatics data. Only Bayer spent any significant amount in advertising, with $244,000 spent last week, but that’s a considerable drop from almost $500,000 spent on OTC, prescription and corporate Twitter ads in each of the previous two weeks.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 154,100+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN

Affinia Therapeutics has ditched its plans to go public in a relatively closed-door market that has not favored Nasdaq debuts for the drug development industry most of this year. A pandemic surge in 2020 and 2021 opened the doors for many preclinical startups, which caught Affinia’s attention and gave the gene therapy biotech confidence in the beginning days of 2022 to send in its S-1.

But on Friday, Affinia threw in the S-1 towel and concluded now is not the time to step onto Wall Street. The biotech has put out few public announcements since the spring of this year. Endpoints News picked the startup as one of its 11 biotechs to watch last year.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 154,100+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN

After hitting a dead end with Summit Therapeutics’ lead program, Bob Duggan has found the drug that he believes will usher into a compelling second act. So compelling, in fact, that it involves $500 million cash — and he’s taking money out of his own pocket to fund the deal.

Striking a partnership with Akeso Therapeutics out of China, Summit is bringing in a bispecific antibody that blocks both PD-1 and VEGF called ivonescimab. Akeso, which has a PD-1/CTLA-4 bispecific approved in China, has already taken ivonescimab into multiple clinical trials, including a Phase III in lung cancer.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 154,100+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN

One company is moving forward in its bid to make a cell therapy for sickle cell disease viable — and after previous setbacks, including a hold earlier this year, execs are touting some really early data.

Editas Medicine announced Tuesday morning that it had positive safety and efficacy data from two patients in a Phase I/II trial investigating EDIT-301, a cell therapy candidate that Editas developed. Safety was measured in both patients, and efficacy data are from only the first patient dosed.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 154,100+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN