In a key tri­umph for Roche’s run­ner-up check­point Tecen­triq, the FDA sanc­tioned a com­bo of the PD-L1 with Cel­gene’s Abrax­ane for front­line use in triple neg­a­tive breast can­cer.

The ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval marks the first can­cer im­munother­a­py reg­i­men ap­proved for this type of metasta­t­ic can­cer, the phar­ma gi­ant said, just months af­ter re­port­ing some his­toric Phase III da­ta on pro­gres­sion-free sur­vival.

San­dra Horn­ing speaks at an End­points @ #JPM19 End­points News

Click on the im­age to see the full-sized ver­sion

In the IM­pas­sion130 study, Tecen­triq plus Abrax­ane (the chemother­a­py nab-pa­cli­tax­el) “sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced the risk of dis­ease wors­en­ing or death (PFS) by 40% com­pared with nab-pa­cli­tax­el alone,” with a me­di­an PFS of 7.4 months ver­sus 4.8 months. The haz­ard ra­tio came in at 0.60 and p<0.0001.

Tecen­triq is now sanc­tioned to treat pa­tients whose tu­mors ex­press PD-L1 — some­thing that needs to be ver­i­fied by a com­pan­ion di­ag­nos­tic from Roche. Ap­proved con­cur­rent­ly for this in­di­ca­tion, the VEN­TANA PD-L1 (SP142) As­say scans tu­mor-in­fil­trat­ing im­mune cells for PD-L1.

Tar­get­ed ther­a­py has long elud­ed pa­tients suf­fer­ing from triple neg­a­tive breast can­cer, as the com­mon types of re­cep­tors — es­tro­gen re­cep­tor, prog­es­terone re­cep­tor and HER2/neu – are not ex­pressed on their tu­mors. The ap­proval of Tecen­triq rep­re­sents “a mean­ing­ful step for­ward in the un­der­stand­ing of this dis­ease,” said Roche head of glob­al de­vel­op­ment San­dra Horn­ing.

Trail­ing be­hind Mer­ck and Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb, the phar­ma gi­ant will need to get out well ahead of the com­pe­ti­tion in key can­cer ar­eas if they ex­pect to hold on to their third-ranked po­si­tion in the mar­ket, as As­traZeneca moves ahead with its ad­van­tage in one im­por­tant niche of non-small cell lung can­cer.

An increase in demand of up to 79% for clinical trials in China has prompted Novotech the Asia-Pacific CRO to rapidly expand the China team, appointing expert local clinical executives to their Shanghai and Hong Kong offices. The company is planning to expand their team by 30% over the next quarter.

Novotech China has seen considerable demand recently which is borne out by research from GlobalData:
A global migration of clinical research is occurring from high-income countries to low and middle-income countries with emerging economies. Over the period 2017 to 2018, for example, the number of clinical trial sites opened by biotech companies in Asia-Pacific increased by 35% compared to 8% in the rest of the world, with growth as high as 79% in China.
Novotech CEO Dr John Moller said China offers the largest population in the world, rapid economic growth, and an increasing willingness by government to invest in research and development.
Novotech’s 23 years of experience working in the region means we are the ideal CRO partner for USA biotechs wanting to tap the research expertise and opportunities that China offers.
There are over 22,000 active investigators in Greater China, with about 5,000 investigators with experience on at least 3 studies (source GlobalData).

Score one for Hal Barron and the new R&D team steering GlaxoSmithKline’s pipeline.

The pharma giant reported this morning that its recently acquired PARP, Zejula (niraparib), hit the primary endpoint on progression-free survival in a frontline maintenance setting for women suffering ovarian cancer — following chemo and regardless of their BRCA status.

GSK bet $5 billion on the Tesaro buyout primarily to get this drug, drawing the shaking heads of biopharma. Why pay a big premium for a drug like this when AstraZeneca was going from strength to strength with Lynparza, ran the argument, having won a hugely important accelerated approval to jump out ahead — way ahead — of the rest of the PARP players? Lynparza — now co-owned by a powerhouse cancer team at Merck — won the first approval in frontline maintenance in ovarian cancer.

→ An ever-ambitious Alkermes $ALKS team plans to add bipolar I disorder to its list of conditions for ALKS-3831, which it plans to pitch to the FDA in Q4. Alkermes says they were persuaded to add bipolar I disorder after a pre-NDA meeting with the agency, which came about 7 months after the biotech reported positive data for schizophrenia. The drug is a combo using olanzapine/samidorphan, which they hope will be shown to be as effective as olanzapine without the substantial increase in the risk of weight gain.

Peter Kolchinsky and Raj Shah have another $300 million-plus to play with on the biotech venture side of their investment business. 

The two announced Monday morning that they’ve put together their first pure-play venture fund at RA Capital Management, which has been known to bet on just about every angle in healthcare investing — from rounds to follow-on investments at public companies. This new fund of theirs arrives well into a go-go era of new startup financing, with a particular focus on building new biotechs.

Billing itself as the first AI biotech with programs in the clinic, Salt Lake City-based Recursion now has a $121 million bankroll to start gathering human data to see if it’s on the right track. 

“We’re trying to build this discovery engine,” Recursion CEO Chris Gibson tells me ahead of the C round news. “We now have the first two programs in the clinic.” And that, he adds, qualifies as a first for any AI establishment “that actually have something in the clinic.”

The FDA has just fired its latest salvo at the SGLT class of diabetes drugs, blowing up some commercial opportunity at AstraZeneca as part of the collateral damage.

The pharma giant reported early Monday that the FDA has rejected its blockbuster drug Farxiga for Type 1 diabetes that can’t be controlled by insulin. And while the pharma giant maintained its usual grim silence in the face of a setback, this one should be easy to interpret.