There’s Just, and there’s Good.
The first was sold in summer 2019. And the PD-1 IL-2 portion of the latter is now entering the fold of Roche.
The two biotechs aren’t related, but Good Therapeutics founder and CEO John Mulligan “liked the idea of having Good and Just in Seattle,” calling his startup’s moniker a “riff” on the Evotec-acquired Just Biotherapeutics.
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Illumina on Tuesday laid out two scenarios for its $8 billion Grail acquisition, both of which put itself in a tough spot.
The San Diego-based company plans to appeal a European Commission decision to block the merger, with the bloc reasoning Illumina could use its DNA sequencing dominance to throttle Grail competitors’ access to the technology. But if the lengthy appeal fails, Illumina is preparing for another option: divesting Grail.
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European regulators blocked Illumina’s $8 billion acquisition of Grail on Tuesday, dealing a whiplash blow to the biotech just days after it prevailed over an FTC challenge.
The EC put out a statement on the move, saying the deal would have “stifled innovation, and reduced choice” in the growing blood-based cancer screening test market. Specifically, the bloc noted that because other companies rely on Illumina’s NGS systems technology for their own products, a merger would have granted Illumina an unfair advantage over its rivals.
Second time’s the charm for Amylyx and its experimental ALS drug. In an unusual twist, outside experts on an FDA advisory committee voted 7-2 in favor of approving AMX0035, just months after voting against the drug in a first adcomm.
Even more unusual was a promise from both CDER’s neuroscience director Billy Dunn and Amylyx’s co-CEOs that AMX0035 would be pulled from the market if the drug fails its ongoing Phase III Phoenix trial.
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When Bruno Abner and his creative team started working up campaign ideas for a new hormone-free contraceptive for women called Phexxi, they knew they wanted the message to be bold and unapologetic.
Then along came actress Annie Murphy. Best known for her comedic turn as Alexis Rose on the hit show “Schitt’s Creek,” Murphy opened the door to humor when McCann Health’s client Evofem Biosciences suggested her as a spokesperson.
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Giuseppe Ciaramella joined Moderna in 2014, back when the mRNA specialist only employed about 70 people. There, as CSO of the infectious disease division, he helped build the initial mRNA vaccine pipeline and steered Moderna’s first vaccine program toward an IND.
He left for Beam Therapeutics four years later, before a wildly successful Covid-19 vaccine propelled Moderna to the biotech hall of fame.
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On the cusp of asking the FDA to approve its cancer drug for progressing desmoid tumors, SpringWorks is out with a fuller picture of the therapy’s performance in a Phase III trial four months after declaring a topline win.
But before the biotech could disclose those results in a late-breaking oral presentation at ESMO, SpringWorks teed up investor interest with a $225 million private placement and an expanded collaboration with GSK on a Blenrep combination, which includes $75 million in equity and $550 million on the line. Those two deals, padding SpringWorks’ cash reserves until 2026, led to a nearly 6% uptick in the company’s shares {SWTX} Wednesday afternoon.
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PARIS — In 2020, Roche’s Tecentriq, a PD-L1 inhibitor, got an FDA nod in combination with Avastin for untreated advanced liver cancer, becoming the first immune checkpoint therapy to make it to the first line for these tumors. That approval, deemed a “landmark,” came on the back of a Phase III trial that showed the Tecentriq combo prolonged survival longer than Nexavar — the Bayer drug that had stood unbeaten as the standard of care in first line liver cancer since 2007.
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PARIS — This weekend at ESMO, the KRAS battle between Amgen and its pesky biotech rivals at Mirati will continue with new slices of combo data for advanced cases of colorectal cancer. And once again, Mirati will get in with a solid punch.
Amgen has updated combination data on its approved pioneer Lumakras and its EGFR inhibitor Vectibix with a 30% overall response rate — way better than the meager 9.3% it posted earlier for the monotherapy.
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It’s well known that pharma companies are interested in and often help patients pay for typically unaffordable drugs, often via drugmaker-funded charities and often at odds with the regulations.
But what a new study in Health Affairs uncovers is just how pervasive this practice has become, with the Harvard-, Northwestern- and USC-affiliated authors noting the “substantial and growing” reach of patient assistance charities from 2010 to 2017.
Bioscience & Technology Business Center
The University of Kansas
Lawrence, Kansas
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