After crowning Keytruda as the first immunotherapy for advanced cervical cancer back in 2021, the FDA has awarded the drug another industry-first designation in an earlier stage of the tumor type. But again, the achievement was not perfect for Merck. Thanks to a new FDA nod, Merck’s Keytruda is the first PD-1 drug to be approved in combination with chemoradiotherapy to treat patients with stage 3 to 4a cervical cancer, the New Jersey pharma giant said Friday. This marks Keytruda’s 39th indication in the U.S. The approval, however, was narrower than expected. It came on the back of results from the Keynote-A18 trial, which showed a tumor progression benefit for the Keytruda-chemoradiation regimen in a broader patient population with earlier-stage cervical cancer. Keynote-A18 tested the Keytruda combo in patients whose cancer was as early as stage 1b2. Among the entire trial population, adding Keytruda to chemoradiotherapy slashed the risk of ...
Bayer is launching a sweeping business overhaul as the German conglomerate sees “no viable alternative.” Bayer on Wednesday unveiled a restructuring of its organization that will “come at the expense of many managerial employees,” according to chairwoman of the executives committee on Bayer’s supervisory board, Barbara Gansewend. The job cuts will begin in the coming months and will end in 2025, the company said without providing a specific number for the jobs impacted. But the reductions will be “significant” at the group in Germany, the company said. Bayer declined to comment on the scale of the layoff or the functions involved. Reducing bureaucracy is the “central component” of the adjustments, a Bayer spokesperson told Fierce Pharma. The company’s new operating models are developed with customers at the center. “For this reason, there are no top-down targets and we will only gradually know what scale is really realistic here,” the spokesperson ...
CEO Bill Anderson said despite prior cost-cutting measures, Bayer still has too many layers of management and bureaucracy. A new restructuring will come with layoffs but the corporate shakeup plan does not yet include a separation of Bayer’s business units. By FRANK VINLUAN Bayer is implementing a corporate restructuring that will slash an unspecified number of jobs, particularly within management. But the strategy does not include a breakup of the conglomerate—at least not yet. In announcing its new strategy late Wednesday, Bayer said it aims to reduce hierarchies and eliminate bureaucracy in the company. The job cuts will happen over the coming months and will be completed by the end of next year at the latest, the company said. Bayer’s corporate shakeup is not entirely a surprise. CEO Bill Anderson, who joined Bayer last June after serving as the chief executive of Roche’s pharmaceuticals division, has been critical of bloat ...
Two cancer therapies have topped Clarivate Analytics’ Drugs to Watch in 2024, an annual report that identifies potential blockbusters and other medicines that could “transform treatment paradigms.” Clarivate predicts Johnson & Johnson’s combination treatment Akeega and Daiichi Sankyo and AstraZeneca’s datopotamab deruxtecan will generate $2.7 billion in sales each in 2029. On the list of 15 transformative medicines, these are the only ones expected to exceed $2 billion in sales by 2029. Clarivate’s report, which is in its 12th year, highlights drugs that have recently been approved or are expected to be approved in 2024. Its sales estimates cover the G7 countries—U.S., U.K., Japan, France, Italy, Germany and Canada. J&J was the only company with more than one drug on the list. Clarivate also spotlighted J&J’s Talvey, a first-in-class bispecific antibody to treat multiple myeloma. The analysts forecast Talvey’s sales will reach $850 million in 2029. The only other cancer ...
In his first presentation as the new CEO of BioMarin, Alexander Hardy left no doubt about his mission for the rare and genetic disease specialist. The top priority for the former Genentech CEO is to accelerate and maximize the commercial potential of dwarfism drug Voxzogo, Hardy said Tuesday at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. His second objective is to ramp up the commercialization of Roctavian, a newly approved gene therapy for hemophilia A. Thirdly, it is up to Hardy to identify BioMarin’s most promising R&D projects and make tough decisions about what to cut. Given his experience heading up Roche subsidiary Genentech for the last five years, Hardy is equipped to take on these challenges. During his time in charge, Genentech launched 10 medicines, including blockbuster macular degeneration drug Vabysmo. The company’s revenue jumped 24% and did so efficiently as profit-per-employee grew by 69%. “Why did I choose BioMarin? I ...
Johnson & Johnson’s acquisition of antibody drug conjugate developer Ambrx Biopharma comes as Novartis and Merck also unveiled M&A deals on the first day of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference. In a report, the investment bank said big pharmas are looking for deals involving de-risked assets. By FRANK VINLUAN Big pharmaceutical companies splashed out big bucks in 2023 to acquire or license antibody drug conjugates, or ADCs. The trend is continuing into the new year with Johnson & Johnson reaching a $2 billion deal to acquire clinical-stage Ambrx Biopharma. According to deal terms announced Monday, J&J will pay $28 cash for each Ambrx share, which is a 105% premium to the biotech’s closing stock price on Friday. In other biopharma deal announcements, Merck is paying $680 million to acquire Harpoon Therapeutics, a developer of targeted cancer therapies, and Novartis is buying autoimmune disease drug developer Calypso Biotech for $250 ...
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 ...
After a pair of high-profile approvals for sickle cell disease gene therapies in the U.S. last month, Pfizer is ushering in the New Year with a regulatory endorsement for its hemophilia B gene therapy north of the border. Health Canada has approved Pfizer’s adeno-associated viral (AAV) vector-based gene therapy, Beqvez, for the treatment of certain adults with hemophilia B, the company said Wednesday. Specifically, the agency endorsed the drug to treat patients with moderate to severe disease who are negative for neutralizing antibodies to variant AAV serotype Rh74. The approval is based on an open-label, single-arm study called BENEGENE-2, which enrolled 45 patients and met its primary goal. In the study, Pfizer’s drug demonstrated noninferiority and superiority to the standard of care, a recurrent Factor IX regimen, on the measure of annualized bleeding rates. Traditionally, patients with hemophilia B have needed to receive routine infusions of Factor IX treatment to ...
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 ...
Here is a selection of recent executive hires, promotions and layoffs occurring across the healthcare industry. By KATIE ADAMS This roundup will be published monthly. It is meant to highlight some of healthcare’s recent hiring news and is not intended to be comprehensive. If you have news about an executive appointment, resignation or layoff that you would like to share for this roundup or the MedCity Moves podcast, please reach out to moves@medcitynews.com. Here is a selection of recent executive hires, promotions, departures and layoffs occurring across the healthcare industry. Hires Aledade, an independent primary care network focused on value-based care, brought Rosemary Weldon onto its team as its new chief product officer. She spent the last decade at CVS Health, where she most recently served as vice president of digital health product management. Amgen welcomed James Bradner to its C-suite, where he now serves as chief scientific officer and ...
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