Recently, an Innovation Passport designation has been awarded to serplulimab, Henlius’ self-developed anti-PD-1 mAb (trade name in China: HANSIZHUANG), for the treatment of extensive stage small cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC) by the U.K. Innovative Licensing and Access Pathway Steering Group including the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). This designation marks serplulimab’s entry into the U.K.’s Innovative Licensing and Access Pathway (ILAP) and is expected to promote the presence of serplulimab in the U.K., benefiting more local SCLC patients. ILAP steering group consists of The All Wales Therapeutics and Toxicology Centre (AWTTC), The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), and the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC). It was launched by the MHRA in order to accelerate the development and access to promising medicines. The designation is open to medicinal product that developed for life-threatening or seriously debilitating condition and meet ...
Bavarian Nordic will concentrate on its portfolio and pipeline of infectious diseases vaccines, including top seller Jynneos, approved for mpox and smallpox. The company only had one clinical-stage cancer vaccine program. By FRANK VINLUAN The mpox outbreak is a memory, but Bavarian Nordic, maker of the only FDA-approved vaccine for the pathogen behind this viral infection, turned skyrocketing demand for its product into record revenue. With that growth comes a need to focus, and the pure-play vaccines company is getting out of the business of developing vaccines for cancer. Bavarian Nordic’s lone cancer vaccine candidate, TAEK-VAC, had reached Phase 1 testing as a potential treatment for chordoma or HER2-positive breast cancer. But this program had also reached the point where further investment is needed, and Bavarian Nordic decided it needs to focus its R&D efforts on infectious disease, the Denmark-based company said Wednesday in its announcement of preliminary 2023 financial ...
In his first earnings call as Bristol Myers Squibb’s CEO, Chris Boerner laid out his plan to quickly navigate the company through a period filled with patent cliffs and new government-mandated pricing pressure in the latter half of the decade. Bristol Myers will have a relatively stable business through 2025 as large legacy products, though declining, continue to generate sizable chunks of revenue. Still, the company’s focus will center on a growth portfolio that includes 11 key brands and about three dozen clinical candidates. Besides commercialization and R&D efforts, the company remains interested in dealmaking, Boerner said. “This, along with pipeline execution, can best position the company into the transition period,” the CEO told analysts Friday. Bristol Myers has “some clear strengths” compared with other companies that have successfully navigated similar periods of patent losses in the past, Boerner figures. The CEO touted the company’s “expanding growth portfolio across multiple ...
More than five years after an FDA accelerated approval in a subtype of progressive colorectal cancer, Bristol Myers Squibb now has data supporting its checkpoint inhibitor doublet in newly diagnosed patients. But another approval may have to wait. The dual immunotherapy combo of Opdivo and Yervoy cut the risk of disease progression or death by 79% compared with chemotherapy—with or without targeted therapies—in patients newly diagnosed with metastatic colorectal cancer that was microsatellite instability-high or mismatch repair-deficient (MSI-H/dMMR). Investigators shared the results, from the CheckMate 8HW study, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium. After about two years of median follow-up, 72% of patients who received the anti-PD-1/CTLA-4 combo were alive without disease progression, versus 14% in the control group. The results “have potentially practice-changing implications” for previously untreated MSI-H/dMMR metastatic colorectal cancer, lead study author Thierry Andre, M.D., from the Sorbonne Université in Paris, said in a ...
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 ...
Recently, the latest clinical data of two Henlius products were released online and will be presented in poster sessions at the 2024 ASCO Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium (ASCO GI), namely, the phase 2/3 study (HLX10-015-CRC301) of Henlius’ NMPA approved anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody (mAb) HANSIZHUANG (serplulimab) in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) with Professor Rui-Hua Xu of Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center as the leading principal investigator, and the phase 2 study (HLX22-GC-201) of Henlius’ novel anti-HER2 mAb, HLX22, combined with HANQUYOU (trastuzumab for injection, HLX02, trade name in Europe: Zercepac®; trade names in Australia: Tuzucip® and Trastucip®) and chemotherapy for the first-line treatment of HER2-positive gastric/gastroesophageal junction (G/GEJ) cancer with Professor Jin Li of Shanghai East Hospital, School of Medicine, Tongji University as the leading principal investigator of this study. Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common malignancies globally. Over 1.9 million newly diagnosed cases and more than 900,000 deaths ...
Astellas Pharma’s zolbetuximab was on track to become the first gastric cancer drug that targets claudin 18.1, a protein found on cancerous stomach cells. Others with clinical-stage programs addressing this this target include AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers Squibb. By FRANK VINLUAN Astellas Pharma’s path to winning the first drug approval for a particular promising gastrointestinal cancer target has hit a detour. The FDA turned down the drugmaker’s application, citing manufacturing issues for the therapy, zolbetuximab. Astellas announced the FDA action earlier this week. The company did not go into detail about the problems spotted by the regulator, but described them as “unresolved deficiencies following its pre-license inspection of a third-party manufacturing facility for zolbetuximab.” Astellas added that the agency did not raise any concerns about the safety or efficacy of the drug, nor is it asking for additional clinical data. Zolbetuximab was developed as a treatment for patients with locally ...
Though GSK divested much of its oncology assets to Novartis in 2015, the company has built it back through a internal R&D and business development deals. GSK Senior Vice President, Global Head of Oncology, R&D Hesham Abdullah explained the company’s evolving cancer strategy in an interview during the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco. By FRANK VINLUAN GSK committed $270 million up front in recent months to gain access to early-stage assets in the class of cancer therapies known as antibody drug conjugates, or ADCs. The deals are part of a broad industry to acquire assets in this therapeutic modality, GSK’s top cancer executive Hesham Abdullah acknowledges. But for GSK, the deals are just one part of an evolving oncology strategy. The strategy has been years in the making. In 2015, GSK divested its oncology business, which Novartis acquired for $16 billion. Abdullah, who is GSK’s senior vice president, ...
Shanghai and Suzhou, TOKYO, December 28, 2023 – Elpiscience Biopharma, Ltd. (Chairman and CEO: Darren Ji, MD, Ph.D., “Elpiscience”) and Astellas Pharma Inc. (TSE: 4503, President and CEO: Naoki Okamura, “Astellas”) today announced a research collaboration and license agreement for novel bi-specific macrophage engagers, ES019 and another program. The two companies will collaboratively conduct early-stage research for these two programs. Elpiscience will also grant Astellas the right to add up to two additional programs to be included in the collaboration. If Astellas exercises its option, Elpiscience will grant Astellas the exclusive right to further research, develop, manufacture and commercialize the products for each program. Elpiscience is a privately held, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to developing next-generation immuno-oncology therapies for cancer patients worldwide. Their Bispecific Macrophage Engager Platform (BiME®) is anti-tumor associated antigen (TAA) and anti-signal-regulatory protein α (SIRPα) bispecific antibody-based platform to activate Tumor Associated Macrophage (TAM) phagocytosis killing towards ...
Shanghai, China, December 28, 2023 – Shanghai Henlius Biotech, Inc. (2696.HK) announces that recently, PT Kalbio Global Medika, the subsidiary of Henlius’ partner PT Kalbe Genexine Biologics (KGbio), has received the relevant registration certificates issued by Indonesia’s National Agency for Drug and Food Control (Indonesian: Badan Pengawas Obat and Makanan, the “BPOM”) for the approval of Henlius’ self-developed and manufactured anti-PD-1 mAb HANSIZHUANG (serplulimab) in Indonesia under the trade name Zerpidio® for the treatment of extensive stage small cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC). This is the first time HANSIZHUANG has been successfully approved for marketing in an overseas market, and it has become the first China anti-PD-1 mAb successfully approved for marketing in Southeast Asia. Currently, Henlius is joining hands with KGbio for the development and commercialisation in 22 countries, and the approval is expected to bring HANSIZHUANG to more patients in Indonesia. Lung cancer (LC) is one of the most ...
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