Drug Development
Lilly met analysts’ sky-high expectations with 28.3% weight loss over 80 weeks for the triple hormone receptor agonist retatrutide in a highly anticipated readout on Thursday.
FEATURED STORIES
Clinical trial setbacks have limited the near-term opportunities for some of Daiichi Sankyo’s ADCs but the drug developer is betting near-term readouts will catapult it into the top tier of oncology companies in the coming years.
BioSpace examines how the FDA approval of Eli Lilly’s oral obesity drug Foundayo has ignited a key race with Novo Nordisk.
Last month, Revolution Medicines’ RAS inhibitor doubled survival in a Phase 3 pancreatic cancer trial. On the biotech’s heels are Immuneering, Actuate Therapeutics, Erasca and more, looking to improve on that result with increased tolerability—and more time for patients.
Subscribe to ClinicaSpace
Clinical trial results, research news, the latest in cancer and cell and gene therapy, in your inbox every Monday
THE LATEST
With Eisai and Biogen’s Leqembi and Eli Lilly’s Kisunla launching onto the market, the 2024 Clinical Trials of Alzheimer’s Disease conference focused on the role these drugs might play, as well as combination therapies and innovative new treatment options.
The past four years have brought disappointment for the Huntington’s community, but optimism is growing as companies including Prilenia and Wave Life Sciences eye paths to approval of therapies that could address the underlying cause of the disease.
The investigational therapy, vesleteplirsen, had been positioned as an updated version of Sarepta’s original exon 51-skipping Duchenne muscular dystrophy drug Exondys 51.
Truist Securities analyst Asthika Goonewardene in an investor note said data for anito-cel—particularly its safety profile—will help differentiate the CAR T therapy from Legend Biotech and J&J’s entrenched Carvykti in relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma.
BEAM-101 seems to be competitive with approved sickle cell treatments, William Blair analysts said in a note to investors, but a patient death underscores the need for less-toxic preconditioning treatments.
While expected and seen as largely incremental, Jefferies analyst Peter Welford in a Tuesday note to investors said the detailed data for three early-stage assets support moving them into Phase IIb studies and creates a “foothold” for AstraZeneca in the weight loss space.
Multiple players are exploring whether modalities designed to combat B cell malignancies can be repurposed against lupus, myasthenia gravis and other conditions traced to misdirected immune response.
Jefferies analyst Roger Song in an investor note said that Viking Therapeutics’ readout for its investigational therapy VK2735 exceeded expectations, with “class-leading” weight loss. Patients on 100-miligram doses of the pill lost 8.2% of their body weight after 28 days.
This year has seen several biopharma companies drop Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease programs, but experts say plenty are still chasing these multi-billion-dollar markets.
While some of the initial excitement around immunotherapies has waned, companies—particularly smaller biotechs—are developing newer iterations that will take cancer care to the next level.