Angie You and Volker Schellenberger, Amunix
Sanofi is crashing the year-end M&A party with a deal of its own.
Immuno-oncology is the name of the game as it swallows Mountain View, CA-based Amunix for $1 billion upfront and up to $225 million in biobucks, tagging a suite of T cell engagers and cytokine therapies as well as a tech platform for making ‘conditionally activated biologics.’
‘The Amunix technology platform utilizes a next generation smart biologics approach to precisely tailor-deliver medicines to become active only in tumor tissues while sparing normal tissues,’ said Sanofi R&D chief John Reed, ‘thus bringing the promise of more effective and safer treatment options for cancer patients.’
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CALQUENCE is a registered trademark of the AstraZeneca group of companies.
At the 2021 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, blood cancer researchers from around the world gathered virtually to discuss the progress that has been made in the field of hematology. Over the past decade, that progress has been tremendous. We’ve seen not only breakthrough approaches to care, but also significant improvement upon existing novel treatments and exploring combinations within those medicines.1 These advances have transformed expectations of what a blood cancer diagnosis now means for patients. While we’ve come a long way, I believe the most exciting scientific discovery is yet to come, and that future advances will truly transform patient care.
Michel Vounatsos, Biogen CEO (Credit: World Economic Forum/Valeriano Di Domenico)
In a surprise move, Biogen announced Monday that it will cut the price of its controversial Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm in half, slashing the cost from $56,000 to $28,000.
The sudden discount marks a sudden turnaround for the big biotech as it struggles to turn around a drug whose stuck-in-the-mud sales and political ramifications have sent the company into turmoil and triggered the ousting of its longtime chief scientist. Biogen’s leadership had resisted calls since June to reduce the price of the drug.
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Graphic: Alexander Lefterov for Endpoints News
Drug pricing reform has been a political football for years, with both Donald Trump and Joe Biden championing changes during their presidencies. Little has moved the needle on Capitol Hill, however, thanks in part to the drug industry’s powerful lobbyists.
In the most recent example, Democrats tried to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices — an immediate non-starter for biopharma proponents. After months of negotiation, the measure fell apart in favor of provisions on a small subset of drugs that passed the House but marked a far cry from Biden’s promises and what many activists had hoped for. The bill, included as part of Biden’s broad social policy agenda, now appears dead after Democrats failed to secure 50 votes in the Senate.
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Right as the new Omicron variant is poised to increase rapidly across the US, the federal government has effectively run out of the only monoclonal antibody treatment that works against it, and at least one major hospital system is now halting all mAb infusions.
Late last month, the federal government paused shipments of GlaxoSmithKline and Vir’s mAb treatment sotrovimab in order to conserve supplies of the only treatment that might work against the Omicron variant. Last week, however, HHS told Endpoints News that the move to hold back sotrovimab was unrelated to Omicron, and due to a surplus of Eli Lilly mAbs, which aren’t effective against Omicron.
Robert Grubbs (Photo by Visual China Group via Getty Images/Visual China Group via Getty Images)
Nobel laureate and Caltech professor Robert Grubbs passed away on Sunday — a legendary chemist who was an ‘equally remarkable husband, father, grandfather, friend, and colleague,’ according to Dennis Dougherty, a fellow Caltech professor.
He was 79.
Grubbs is perhaps best known for developing the metathesis method in organic synthesis — a feat that earned him and two other chemists (Richard Schrock and Yves Chauvin) a Nobel Prize in 2005. Metathesis, which means ‘change places,’ is a type of chemical reaction in which double bonds between carbon atoms are broken and reorganized at the same time as atomic groups change place. Around 1992, Grubbs discovered a metallic compound that effectively facilitates metathesis, and is stable in the air.
John Oyler, BeiGene CEO (Endpoints News, PharmCube)
Count Novartis in for the burgeoning TIGIT race.
After starting the year by plunking down $650 million upfront to license BeiGene’s PD-1 inhibitor — with positive Phase III data stacking up ever since — Novartis is returning to its biotech partner to pick up a Phase III TIGIT drug while entrusting it with marketing five of its approved cancer treatments in China.
Their goal, BeiGene CEO John Oyler suggests in an interview with Endpoints News, is nothing short of vaulting to a leadership position in the TIGIT space with the additional horsepower that Novartis brings.
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One of Pfizer’s new vaccine TV commercials never mentions its vaccine brand Comirnaty. In fact, it doesn’t mention vaccines or Covid-19 at all and doesn’t show people wearing masks or social distancing. Yet it’s clear the ad is talking about the pharma’s Covid-19 vaccines.
The ad’s voiceover talks about the unremarkable moments and routines that matter, like getting a coffee refill at a diner or Sunday grocery shopping. The images shift from those everyday moments to a scientists and purple lidded glass vials spinning off a production line and being packed into freezers.
Tom Plitz (L) and Arthur Roach, Chord Therapeutics CEO and founder
About a year after Geneva-based Chord Therapeutics emerged from stealth to see if it could repurpose an old chemotherapy agent for rare diseases, Merck KGaA is swooping in with a buyout.
While the companies are keeping mum about the financial terms of the deal, Merck KGaA is adding Chord’s lead candidate to its neurology pipeline — a small molecule oral version of the chemotherapy drug cladribine dubbed CRD1.
As the new year rapidly approaches, and gyms and health food stores across America prepare for a wave of people seeking weight loss, Novo Nordisk has announced that it does not expect to meet demand for Wegovy, its prescription injectable weight-loss medication for obesity, until the second half of 2022 in the US.
The shortage comes due to manufacturing issues at a contract manufacturer that was tasked with filling syringes for the pens. The news comes just days after Novo announced that it would invest roughly $2.58 billion to expand its manufacturing hub in Kalundborg, Denmark with three new facilities and the expansion of a fourth to keep up with the success of its diabetes and obesity med semaglutide, Wegovy and Rybelsus.
https://endpts.com/pouncing-on-next-gen-i-o-play-sanofi-acquires-amunix-for-1b-and-picks-up-universal-mask-tech/
