Top 100 biotech venture investors; Bristol Myers’ IL-12 breakup; Scientific twist of fate; Tracking biopharma layoffs; and more

11 Feb 2023
endpts.com
Phase 2Phase 3
Welcome back to Endpoints Weekly, your review of the week’s top biopharma headlines. Want this in your inbox every Saturday morning? Current Endpoints readers can visit their reader profile to add Endpoints Weekly. New to Endpoints? Sign up here . Thanks for reading. This week is extra special — and not just because of the Super Bowl — as it marks the 100th edition of the Endpoints Weekly. I’d love to hear from you on what you like about this report — and what you think could be better. You can always reply to this email to get in touch. (Correction note: In last week’s email, I mistakenly wrote that Bristol Myers Squibb abandoned two “peptide-masked” CTLA-4 programs. Only one of the two discontinued CTLA-4 programs was peptide-masked.) A dramatic downturn from 2021 to 2022 may have brought biopharma VC investing back to pre-pandemic levels, but there are some nuanced differences, according to numbers tracked by DealForma’s Chris Dokomajilar. Join Endpoints’ John Carroll for his annual review of the top 100 venture investors in biotech as he takes a deep look at a central question: Who’s staying at the deals table, and what do they want now? Dragonfly put out word that Bristol Myers Squibb has handed back all rights to its IL-12 clinical-stage drug after spending $650 million to advance it into the clinic. The news arrives amid some R&D turbulence at the pharma giant and according to Bristol Myers, the IL-12 drug just didn’t measure up — a characterization that Dragonfly chief Bill Haney took issue with . Economics, Haney argued, played a key role. Don Kyle spent more than 20 years working for Purdue Pharma , right through the US opioid epidemic that led to the company’s rise and eventual infamy. When the company, facing mounting legal troubles, shelved his research on non-opioid painkillers, he found an unlikely way to reboot the project. Jared Whitlock’s latest feature tells the story of how Purdue’s $272 million payout funded a new home for that discarded work. Neurona Therapeutics , which is working on cell therapies for epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and other neuro disorders, laid off about 25% of its workforce recently as it focuses on a clinical-stage program and pauses preclinical efforts. Eliem CEO Bob Azelby is leaving the biotech alongside other top execs, among 55% of the staffers let go while the company shelves its clinical lead neuro drug and pivots to a preclinical program. Aligos shaved another 10% as it reorganized around NASH and Covid-19 programs. Thermo Fisher Scientific laid off 230 workers at three of its locations in San Diego in what it calls an adjustment to remain in line with current manufacturing volume demands. AstraZeneca spinout Aristea Therapeutics is shutting down after terminating multiple Phase II studies of its inflammatory drug, citing undisclosed safety issues. Magenta Therapeutics laid off 84% of its staff, including its CEO , as it searches for an exit in the wake of a patient death that forced it to abandon its stem cell transplant drug. Oramed Pharmaceuticals will look at strategic alternatives after the biotech’s attempt at creating an insulin pill faltered in a Phase III last month. The FDA spelled out its concerns about the “unprecedented” design of GSK’s proposed studies to support an accelerated approval for the PD-1 Jemperli in rectal cancer in briefing documents before it convened its Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee. After much deliberation, the experts largely gave their backing to the set of single-arm trials being suggested, voting 8-5 to support GSK’s plans. PREMIUM Curing cancer, or finding new ways to achieve curative progress, extending lives, has become a hotbed of activity in biopharma. Endpoints Editor-in-Chief John Carroll sat down at JP Morgan with a group of industry experts working on that: Kristen Hege from Bristol Myers Squibb, Aviv Regev from Genentech, Brian Alexander from Foundation Medicine, Shiva Malek from Novartis, and George Addona from Merck . The full video and transcript are now available on our website. Pharma marketers and healthcare agencies are experimenting and beginning to use generative AI — the broad category that compasses applications like ChatGPT — just like consumer companies, although with an added level of caution. Now that Covid-19 isn’t forcing radical change in pharma R&D productivity, some of the old trends are back — with a vengeance, as Deloitte reports a post-pandemic plunge back to reality after a booming 2021. Q4 EARNINGS PEOPLE R&D FINANCING LAW PHARMA MARKETINGRX FDA+ MANUFACTURING DON’T MISS
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