Clinical research
It was a relatively quiet week in terms of clinical trial news, but there were some significant releases. Here’s a look.
Merck and Eisai announced that their combination of Merck’s checkpoint inhibitor Keytruda and Eisai’s Lenvima, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor, significantly improved progression-free survival in advanced endometrial cancer.
The results published in the NEJM state that pegcetacoplan met the study’s primary endpoint for efficacy, demonstrating an advantage over eculizumab with a statistically significant improvement in adjusted means of 3.8 g/dL of hemoglobin at week 16 (p<0.001). An impressive 85% of patients were transfusion free at 16 weeks, in contrast to only 15% of eculizumab-treated patients.
It will evaluate about 440 patients and the treatments’ effect on liver fibrosis improvement and NASH resolution.
Findings from a second interim analysis of a first-in-human Phase I/II clinical trial of Translate Bio’s CF mRNA candidate, MRT5005, show the drug did not significantly improve lung function in patients with CF.
Amathus Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company working on small molecule modulators across diverse genetically defined diseases, has entered into a strategic collaboration with Merck to develop novel small molecule treatment candidates for neurodegenerative diseases.
Infectious disease-focused Vaccitech, which partnered with AstraZeneca and Oxford University on the development and manufacturing of that company’s COVID-19 vaccine, raised $168 million in a Series B financing round.
Topline data from Merck KGaA’s Phase II INTR@PID BTC 047 study show bintrafusp alfa has single-agent efficacy and safety in the second-line treatment of locally advanced or metastatic biliary tract cancer in patients who have either failed or are intolerant to first-line platinum-based chemotherapy.
Please check out the biopharma industry coronavirus (COVID-19) stories that are trending for March 16, 2021.
Long-term data from Janssen’s Phase III DISCOVER-2a trial show that TREMFYA® (guselkumab), a selective IL-23 inhibitor, lead to skin clearance and joint symptom relief for up to two years in patients with active psoriatic arthritis.
PRESS RELEASES