Novartis
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Novartis has been on something of a housecleaning binge since Vasant (Vas) Narasimhan took over the chief executive officer position from Joseph Jimenez in January of this year. On October 30, Novartis indicated it planned to abandon approximately 20 percent of its research projects.
Cabaletta Bio launched out of the University of Pennsylvania with an exclusive license deal and two multi-year sponsored research agreements. The fledgling biotech company will work on engineered T cell products for B cell-mediated autoimmune disease.
Pancreatic cancer is currently rated as the third-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S., and is projected to be the second by 2020. It’s a notoriously difficult cancer to treat and is typically diagnosed so late in the game that it has metastasized throughout the body.
Nektar Therapeutics, based in San Francisco, and New York-based Pfizer are teaming up to evaluate combination regimens in several cancer settings. Those include metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) and squamous cell carcinoma of the head and heck (SCCHN).
According to the American Cancer Society, almost 601,000 people in the U.S. died of cancer in 2017. The two most common types of cancer are lung cancer and breast cancer, followed by colorectal cancer, prostate cancer and stomach cancer.
Days after Novartis axed one-fifth of its research programs, the Swiss pharma giant said it intends to seek regulatory approval for 60 new treatments between 2019 and 2021.
The U.S. FDA approved Pfizer’s Lorbrena (lorlatinib) for ALK-positive metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in patients whose disease hasn’t progressed on crizotinib and at least one other ALK inhibitor or for patients whose disease has progressed on alectinib or ceritinib as the first ALK inhibitor.
Biopharma companies set to release financial reports next week have reported positive news in recent months.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave the green light to Hyrimoz, a biosimilar to AbbVie’s blockbuster drug Humira, five years ahead of the time it can be launched in U.S. markets.
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