Drug Development
Biopharma’s obsession with the weight loss sector—projected to exceed $130 billion in revenue by 2035—shows no signs of slowing down as analysts gear up for a year that will test the oral market and provide key data on novel mechanisms.
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After advancing in lockstep through the pandemic, the fortunes of the biotechs have diverged as their use of COVID-19 windfalls has taken shape.
AstraZeneca’s $15 billion pledge to its China operations highlights the country’s advantages. But other regions are also hoping to host more clinical studies.
With Lykos’ regulatory failure now squarely in the rearview mirror, Compass Pathways and Definium are leading what one analyst suspects will be “a very big year for psychedelics.”
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Roche’s checkpoint inhibitor Tecentriq (atezolizumab) hit the mark in the company’s Phase III IMpower010 trial of the drug compared to best supportive care in people with resectable early-stage lung cancer.
AstraZeneca reported that the U.S. Phase III trial of the vaccine, AZD1222, demonstrated an efficacy of 79% at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 and 100% efficacy at preventing severe disease and hospitalization.
A COVID-19 nasal spray vaccine developed by Rokote Laboratories Finland Ltd., is preparing for Phase I trials in Finland…if it can win funding.
A new nonhuman primate Alzheimer’s disease model developed by researchers from University of California, Davis and elsewhere could open the door to getting better therapies into human testing.
A Phase III trial from Idera Pharmaceuticals did not reach the primary endpoint of ORR in patients with anti-PD-1 refractory advanced melanoma treated with a combination regimen comprising ipilimumab and the company’s investigational agent tilsotolimod.
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.
According to an interview with Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO’s chief scientist, the new investigational COVID-19 vaccines rely on alternative technologies and systems of delivery. Some include oral and nasal administration, while others use skin patches.
Every week there are numerous scientific studies published. Here’s a look at some of the more interesting ones.