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Thanks for reading. This week is extra special — and not just because of the Super Bowl — as it marks the 100th edition of the Endpoints Weekly. I’d love to hear from you on what you like about this report — and what you think could be better. You can always reply to this email to get in touch.
(Correction note: In last week’s email, I mistakenly wrote that Bristol Myers Squibb abandoned two “peptide-masked” CTLA-4 programs. Only one of the two discontinued CTLA-4 programs was peptide-masked.)
A dramatic downturn from 2021 to 2022 may have brought biopharma VC investing back to pre-pandemic levels, but there are some nuanced differences, according to numbers tracked by DealForma’s Chris Dokomajilar. Join Endpoints’ John Carroll for his annual review of the
top 100 venture investors
in biotech as he takes a deep look at a central question: Who’s staying at the deals table, and what do they want now?
Dragonfly
put out word that
Bristol Myers Squibb
has handed back all rights to its
IL-12 clinical-stage drug
after spending $650 million to advance it into the clinic. The news arrives amid some R&D turbulence at the pharma giant and according to Bristol Myers, the IL-12 drug just didn’t measure up — a characterization that Dragonfly chief Bill Haney
took issue with
. Economics, Haney argued, played a key role.
Don Kyle
spent more than 20 years working for
Purdue Pharma
, right through the US opioid epidemic that led to the company’s rise and eventual infamy. When the company, facing mounting legal troubles, shelved his research on non-opioid painkillers, he found an
unlikely way
to reboot the project. Jared Whitlock’s latest feature tells the story of how Purdue’s $272 million payout funded a new home for that discarded work.
Neurona Therapeutics
, which is working on cell therapies for epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and other neuro disorders, laid off about
25% of its workforce
recently as it focuses on a clinical-stage program and pauses preclinical efforts.
Eliem
CEO
Bob Azelby
is
leaving
the biotech alongside other top execs, among 55% of the staffers let go while the company shelves its clinical lead neuro drug and pivots to a preclinical program.
Aligos
shaved another 10% as it
reorganized
around NASH and Covid-19 programs.
Thermo Fisher Scientific
laid off 230 workers at three of its locations in San Diego in what it calls an
adjustment
to remain in line with current manufacturing volume demands.
AstraZeneca
spinout
Aristea Therapeutics
is
shutting down
after terminating multiple Phase II studies of its inflammatory drug, citing undisclosed safety issues.
Magenta Therapeutics
laid off 84% of its staff,
including its CEO
, as it searches for an exit in the wake of a patient death that forced it to abandon its stem cell transplant drug.
Oramed Pharmaceuticals
will look at
strategic alternatives
after the biotech’s attempt at creating an insulin pill faltered in a Phase III last month.
The FDA
spelled out
its concerns about the “unprecedented” design of
GSK’s
proposed studies to support an accelerated approval for the PD-1
Jemperli
in rectal cancer in briefing documents before it convened its Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee. After much deliberation, the experts largely
gave their backing
to the set of single-arm trials being suggested, voting 8-5 to support GSK’s plans.
PREMIUM
Curing cancer, or finding new ways to achieve curative progress, extending lives, has become a hotbed of activity in biopharma. Endpoints Editor-in-Chief John Carroll sat down at JP Morgan with a group of industry experts working on that:
Kristen Hege
from
Bristol Myers Squibb, Aviv Regev
from
Genentech, Brian Alexander
from
Foundation Medicine, Shiva Malek
from
Novartis,
and
George Addona
from
Merck
. The
full video and transcript
are now available on our website.
Pharma marketers and healthcare agencies are
experimenting
and beginning to use generative AI — the broad category that compasses applications like ChatGPT — just like consumer companies, although with an added level of caution.
Now that Covid-19 isn’t forcing radical change in pharma R&D productivity, some of the
old trends
are back — with a vengeance, as
Deloitte
reports a post-pandemic plunge back to reality after a booming 2021.
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