San Francisco—Nearly all top cancer drugmakers have struck deals in the sizzling antibody-drug conjugate field—but not Novartis. On Monday, the Swiss pharma’s CEO Vas Narasimhan explained how he’s resisted the temptation. The answer is radioligand therapies, Narasimhan said Monday during the 2024 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in response to a question from Fierce Pharma. “We have a long history within research of ADCs, but we have not been successful,” Narasimhan said. “To be clear, part of our focus strategy is looking at places where we think we can create long-term sustainable leadership. And we are investing in radioligand therapies.” ADCs and radioligand therapies are similar in that both technologies act as guided missiles. For ADCs, the guiding force is an antibody, and the cancer-killing payload is a chemotherapy. A radioligand therapy uses a ligand to target cancer cells and kills them with a therapeutic radioisotope. Radiotherapies may have a safety ...
AbbVie took the top two TV drug ad spending spots with its immunology duo Rinvoq and Skyrizi, respectively, in December as it looks to cement its place as the pharma with the deepest direct-to-consumer pockets. AbbVie spent nearly identical amounts on all DTCs for each drug: $39.8 million for Rinvoq across its five spots and $39.7 million for Skyrizi across seven spots. In November, the positions of the two drugs were swapped, with Skyrizi taking the top spot and Rinvoq coming in second. Coming in third place was rival Dupixent, marketed by Sanofi and Regeneron, with a much smaller $27.6 million spent across its ads for the blockbuster med. And Pfizer has suddenly started to spend big on its new RSV vaccine Abrysvo, coming in fourth place with a strong spend of $18 million last month, more than five times the $4 million it spent in November. In fifth place ...
In 2022, fueled by its powerhouse COVID products, Pfizer became the first company in the history of the biopharma industry to top $100 billion in annual revenue. What would the New York drugmaker do for an encore? In 2023, Pfizer went from generating the most sales in the industry to gaining the most approvals. With seven FDA nods in 2023, Pfizer had more than double that of any other company. It’s also more than twice as many as every drugmaker over each of the last three years. You need to go back to 2019, when Novartis scored six approvals, to find a company that approached what Pfizer accomplished in 2023. Pfizer’s splurge included four approvals in a dizzying five weeks in May and June. And all but one of the seven products has been pegged by analysts as a potential blockbuster. Two of the newly approved Pfizer treatments were acquired ...
ROCKVILLE, Md. and SUZHOU, China, Dec 28, 2023 — Innovent Biologics, Inc. (“Innovent”) (HKEX: 01801), a world-class biopharmaceutical company that develops, manufactures and commercializes high quality medicines for the treatment of oncology, autoimmune, metabolic, ophthalmology and other major diseases, and Xuanzhu Biopharma, today announce that they entered into a clinical trial collaboration and supply agreement for the combination therapies of sintilimab injection (brand name: TYVYT®) with KM-501, a novel HER-2 bispecific ADC, as potential treatment options for advanced solid tumors in China. Under the agreement, Innovent will supply sintilimab for the collaborated clinical trial. Xuanzhu Biopharma will conduct a Phase 1b clinical study to evaluate the anti-tumor activity and safety of the combination therapy of sintilimab with KM-501 in Chinese patients with advanced solid tumors. TYVYT® (sintilimab injection) is an innovative PD-1 inhibitor co-developed by Innovent and Eli Lilly and Company in China. It has been approved and included in ...
Over the years, shareholders at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) have repeatedly voiced concerns on a variety of subjects to top pharma companies. Now, as 2023 comes to a close, the group is taking pharma giants to task over their patenting strategies and potential human rights shortfalls. In proposals to AbbVie, Eli Lilly, Gilead, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Pfizer, the group is pushing the companies to review how add-on patents for medicines can affect patient access. Additionally, Bristol Myers Squibb, Pfizer and Eli Lilly face calls to review and update their human rights policies. While ICCR has voiced pharma-related complaints plenty of times in the past, its proposals haven’t been met with much enthusiasm by the companies’ larger pools of shareholders. In 2019, for instance, investors at several large pharma companies rejected the group’s proposals to study the potential link between CEO pay and drug prices. In ...
Even with the Federal Trade Commission keeping a watchful eye on the biopharma industry and the economic landscape giving some players pause, mergers and acquisitions are back on the rise. And it is with cautious optimism that industry watchers see the trend continuing in 2024. Wielding plenty of firepower, drugmakers are more likely to make higher-value deals in the new year as they address growth challenges that loom later in the decade because of patent cliffs and the effects of the Inflation Reduction Act. “Executives will continue to deploy cash balances and seek out areas of innovation and clinical differentiation,” PricewaterhouseCoopers wrote in its Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences: U.S. Deals 2024 Outlook. “As regulators’ perspectives on key deal factors become better understood, there may be a return of larger deals, along with continued interest in the $5 billion to $15 billion deals to fill targeted strategic gaps.” Look no further ...
Following an IPO and ahead of its fiscal 2023 earnings release next month, German drug containment and delivery specialist Schott Pharma is trumpeting its recent momentum. Over the course of its 2023 fiscal year, Schott Pharma charted a 9% year-over-year revenue boost to €899 million (about $986 million), the company said Tuesday. For comparison, the company pulled down €821 million in fiscal year 2022. Schott credited the gains to the expansion of its production capabilities, especially as they pertain to drug delivery systems and new production lines for prefillable polymer syringes in Germany. Schott partners with a range of drugmakers in the biopharma industry. The company and its products are involved in several significant trends, such as the GLP-1 treatments from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, plus mRNA vaccines from Moderna. Schott’s revenue win comes more than a year after the company set out on its own. Back in August ...
Despite achieving its Phase 3 study’s main goal, the results for Point Biopharma’s therapy are short of what Novartis radiopharmaceutical Pluvicto achieved in a similarly designed clinical trial. Nevertheless, the data readout should clear the way for Eli Lilly to complete its $1.4 billion acquisition of Point. By FRANK VINLUAN A Point Biopharma Global cancer therapy key to a $1.4 billion Eli Lilly M&A deal has met the main goal of its pivotal clinical trial in prostate cancer. But the results raise questions about how well the drug will match up against a radiopharmaceutical marketed by Novartis. The Point drug, PNT2002, is also a radiopharmaceutical. It offers targeted delivery of a radioactive particle by linking it to a ligand that targets PSMA, a protein abundant on the surface of prostate cancer cells. The open-label Phase 3 study evaluated the Point radiopharmaceutical in patients with cases of prostate cancer that has ...
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted priority review for the full approval of the antibody drug conjugate, Elahere (mirvetuximab soravtansine-gynx) and has set a Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) action date of 5 April 2024. Elahere was a central element in the $10.1bn ImmunoGen acquisition deal announced by AbbVie last week (30 November). AbbVie expects the acquisition to complete in mid-2024. Elahere is an antibody drug conjugate (ADC) that targets folate receptor alpha (FRα). In November 2022, it was granted accelerated approval as the treatment of FRα-positive, platinum-resistant epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer for patients who have received one to three prior systemic treatment regimens. The latest supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) for Elahere is supported by the data from the Phase III MIRASOL trial, which will allow for the accelerated approval to be converted to a full approval. ImmunoGen reported $105.2m in ...
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