| | | |   | Good morning, one and all. Damian here with news on Aduhelm, the latest letdown in immuno-oncology, and a startup taking on a massive incumbent. | | | Biogen, Eisai rework agreement on Aduhelm Biogen and the Japanese drugmaker Eisai yesterday announced a reworked partnership agreement for Aduhelm that gives Biogen full control over the troubled Alzheimer’s treatment.
Effective next year, Eisai will be paid a single-digit royalty based on sales of Aduhelm, rather than sharing the drug’s global profits and losses. Since Aduhelm sales have been minimal, the amended partnership terms means Eisai will no longer carry the drug’s losses on its books. In return, Biogen gets “sole” decision-making rights on Aduhelm and worldwide commercialization rights.
In April, Medicare is expected to make a final decision on a proposed policy that would drastically restrict its coverage of Aduhelm, cutting the potential market from millions of patients to mere thousands.
In a statement yesterday, Biogen CEO Michel Vounatsos didn't say the company would remove Aduhelm from the market if the Medicare decision remains as restrictive as proposed, but it certainly sounds like the option would be on the table. “This amended collaboration agreement will increase operational efficiency and agility in addressing market developments, including the final determination of CMS on coverage of Aduhelm,” he said. | Another big idea in oncology comes up short A combination treatment from Nektar Therapeutics and Bristol Myers Squibb failed in a pivotal lymphoma trial, the companies said yesterday, an expensive disappointment with repercussions for the whole field.
As STAT’s Adam Feuerstein reports, patients treated with Nektar’s bempegaldesleukin and Bristol’s Opdivo fared no better than those who received the second drug on its own. The companies did not disclose detailed results.
The highly anticipated data sent Nektar’s share price down about 70%. It’s also a blow for Bristol, which paid nearly $2 billion to partner with the company with the hope bempegaldesleukin could become a key medicine in the competitive field of immuno-oncology.
Read more. | A startup takes on the Goliath of genome sequencing Illumina, a $50 billion company that controls about 90% of the market for genome sequencing technology, has perhaps the biggest anti-competitive moat in the life sciences. But one startup believes it can chip away at Illumina’s dominance with a technology that’s more flexible and, perhaps most important, cheaper.
As STAT’s Jonathan Wosen reports, the company is called Element Biosciences and it has quietly raised more than $400 million to take on Illumina. Element’s sequencer, which launched yesterday, can read a billion nucleotides of information for $5 to $7, which CEO Molly He said is the lowest cost among competing technologies.
Element’s leadership is full of Illumina alumni, including He, who once led protein engineering at the company, and chairman John Stuelpnagel, who was Illumina’s founding CEO.
Read more. | 2022 STATUS List: The most definitive and consequential accounting of leaders in health, medicine, and science Meet the STATUS List — 46 individuals shaping the future of their fields. Drawn from sectors including biotechnology and diagnostics, as well as broader arenas like education and policy, each individual has taken extra steps to help others and build community in these often-divisive times. Explore the list. | The Senate’s drug pricing bark has produced little bite It was a March day in 2019 when the Senate Finance Committee called seven drug industry CEOs to testify about the rising cost of medicines, a bruising bit of political theater widely perceived as a prelude to meaningful legislation on drug prices.
Three years and more than a dozen hearings later, almost nothing has changed. As STAT’s Nicholas Florko reports, the anniversary is a stark reminder that Washington has failed to keep even its most incremental promises when it comes to regulating drug prices.
Congress’ sole legislative success is the CREATES Act, a law that allows generic drug makers to more easily sue competitors that unfairly keep them off the market. But more than two years after its passage, the law is hardly being used.
Read more. | Do drug companies overpay their directors? In an unusual move, an influential shareholder advisory firm is urging investors to vote against Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals’ proposed compensation for board members, calling the figures “excessive.”
As STAT’s Ed Silverman reports, Glass Lewis took issue with how much Arrowhead pays its non-executive directors, which it claims are above the 90th percentile among companies of a similar size. Arrowhead defended the compensation as “appropriate,” and shareholders will get to vote on the matter at the company’s annual meeting Thursday.
It’s exceedingly rare that Glass Lewis, one of the two major advisory firms, comes out against director compensation. The company has only done so about five times in the last five years, U.S. Research manager Aaron Wendt said, and roughly half of those were drug companies.
Read more. | More reads - Patients are flocking back to hospitals, but volumes are at the mercy of Covid surges, new documents show. STAT+
- Novavax's COVID vaccine rollout in EU off to a slow start. Reuters
- Long wait for pivotal data on Sanofi's oral SERD ends in failure. FierceBiotech
- Watchdog says Lilly made ‘false assertions’ about impact of pausing political donations after Jan. 6 attack. STAT+
| Thanks for reading! Until tomorrow,  | | | |
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