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New data on Hengrui Pharma and Kailera Therapeutics’ investigational oral GLP-1 have validated the late-stage weight loss asset and paved the road for a regulatory submission in China, but analysts pointed to high rates of nausea and vomiting that could challenge the ongoing U.S. study.
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Molecular glue degraders are gaining traction in the clinic as well as funding from Big Pharma, with their potential to treat previously “undruggable” cancers and immunological diseases. Here are five clinical programs worth keeping an eye on.
Last month, the FDA launched TrialBlazer, intended to streamline the IND path and bring early clinical trials and medical innovation home to the U.S. It’s a start, but new agency leadership must see it through.
FDA
Significant leadership instability at the FDA—compounded by continued workforce attrition—led to a slight slowdown in overall regulatory productivity in the first half of this year, but the agency has been catching up of late.
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Congressional letters sent to the CEOs of Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Merck, BMS and AbbVie this week voicing concerns about the pharmas’ clinical trials in China highlight an ongoing discrepancy in how government and industry think about the rise of the Asian country’s biotech industry.
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Passage Bio, which has been working toward a registrational trial for a drug candidate whose indications include frontotemporal dementia, is exploring strategic alternatives in addition to cutting staff.
Comprehending the spate of recent rejections in the cell and gene therapy space may require looking no further than early-stage clinical trials of candidates from REGENXBIO, Excision BioTherapeutics and Intellia Therapeutics.
Amid disruption to the outsourced fill/finish market, PCI is investing $100 million to more than double the capacity to fill ready-to-use prefilled syringes and cartridges at its San Diego campus.
The advisory committee meeting—the FDA’s first drug-related adcomm in nine months—could have been a “more conceptual discussion” about the design of AstraZeneca’s Phase 3 trial of camizestrant in HER2-negative advanced breast cancer, former cancer regulator Harpreet Singh told BioSpace.
Summit Therapeutics planned an early interim progression-free survival readout for HARMONi-3 in the hope of enabling earlier regulatory engagement—but the early analysis delivered disappointment for the company and shareholders.
Veppanu, the first PROTAC therapy approved by the FDA, improved progression free survival by 43% versus AstraZeneca’s Faslodex but showed no such significant benefit in the intention-to-treat analysis.
Candid Therapeutics follows closely behind Neurona Therapeutics, which UCB acquired in mid-April in a potential $1.15 billion deal.
In its latest biopharma pipeline report, Deloitte warned that the growing importance of a small pool of potential mega-blockbusters raises the risk of “significant value destruction from a single program failure.”
The FDA is looking at a slew of label expansions this month, including one that could open up home-based treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.
The new plant will give Novartis end-to-end capabilities centered on North Carolina, where it plans to have five facilities across three sites.