July 10, 2023

The need-to-know this morning

French biotech Nanobiotix reached an agreement with Johnson & Johnson for development and licensing rights to an experimental drug designed to enhance the effects of radiation cancer therapy. Under terms of the deal, J&J is paying $60 million upfront to Nanobiotix for the drug, called NBTXR3, with potential future payments of up to $1.8 billion.
Iovance Biotherapeutics said it reached an agreement with the Food and Drug Administration on a plan to use results from an ongoing Phase 2 study of its experimental cell therapy called LN-145 as the basis for a potential accelerated approval in advanced lung cancer. The company expects to complete enrollment of the study in the second half of next year.

win or lose

Biotech's next big binary is on the way

BridgeBio stands to gain or lose more than $1 billion in value later this month when it discloses data from an all-important clinical trial of the heart drug acoramidis.

The results, expected in late July, are from a Phase 3 trial testing whether acoramidis can outperform placebo in reducing hospitalizations and death over the course of 30 months for patients with ATTR-CM, a progressive heart disease. In an earlier portion of the same study, BridgeBio's drug performed no better than placebo on a test of how far study participants could walk over the course of six minutes, failing to achieve its primary goal and forcing the company to alter its plans.

The stakes are dramatic. If the study is maximally positive, BridgeBio's stock price could double, according Mizuho Securities analyst Salim Syed. And if it's a total wash, shares could get cut in half, Syed wrote in a note to clients last week.

cravings

GLP-1 agonists and the nature of desire

The new wave of GLP-1 drugs have a curious effect on desire: Cravings are decimated, as the medicines alter the brain circuitry that drives them. Rather than just creating feelings of fullness or satiety, these hormone-blocking drugs seem to have a similar effect on a range of addictions — calling into question whether these blockbuster medicines could help curb any and all destructive desires.

"Individuals with substance use disorders will do things to get drugs they otherwise would never do — lie, cheat, steal, and from the people who are most important to them," said Patricia Sue Grigson, a longtime substance use researcher and the director of the Penn State Addiction Center for Translation. "But these GLP-1 receptor agonists are reducing a lot of addiction behaviors across many modalities. That helps us to understand that a person isn't just liking and wanting drugs and alcohol; they may feel like that they need it, in the same way they need food and water, as if they're going to die if they don't have it."

chatbots

Examining AI's effect on biosecurity

Adding to the roster of AI-driven chatbot paranoias, their impact on biosecurity is a growing concern. Per former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, AI-designed bioweapons are indeed "a very near-term concern." Why? Well, they can be devilishly helpful in helping designing new pandemics, a biosecurity expert opines for the Financial Times.

Although it's not so easy to develop bioweapons — with or without chatbots — it needs to be a global priority to examine how AI and biotechnology will converge. "We have a narrow window during which to take targeted and effective action, and bring the world along," writes Cassidy Nelson of the UK-based think tank Centre for Long-Term Resilience. "To act before the risks are upon us, our policymaking and statecraft will need to be just as good as our science."

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