Sanofi and BMS paid big money for rare disease and cancer assets, while Regeneron got in the obesity game; AstraZeneca, Gilead and Amgen shone at ASCO; RFK Jr. and the CDC appeared to disagree over COVID-19 vaccine recommendations and several news outlets are questioning the validity of the White House’s Make America Healthy Again report.
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The words of the week so far in biopharma are “deals” and “cancer”—or, more specifically, money being invested in cancer and other key therapeutic areas. With the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s
annual conference
underway in Chicago, Bristol Myers Squibb got in the PD-1/PD-L1xVEGF game, paying potentially
more than $11 billion
to co-develop BioNTech’s solid tumor bispecific BNT327.
Elsewhere,
Sanofi
nabbed the year’s second-biggest buyout, picking up Blueprint for $9.5 billion, expanding its rare disease portfolio. And
Regeneron
plunked down up to $2 billion to license a dual GLP-1/GIP receptor agonist from Chinese biopharma Hansoh Pharmaceuticals Group.
Back in
Chicago
, presentations by AstraZeneca, Gilead and Amgen drew rave reviews from investor analysts, while Pfizer and Arvinas elaborated on mixed data from a PROTAC that showed positive results in only a subsection of breast cancer patients, failing to impress Wall Street. Meanwhile,
Bicara
’s solid survival stats in head and neck cancer weren’t enough to clear the high bar set by rival Merus. At the meeting,
BioSpace
’s own Dan Samorodnitsky sat down with
Jazz Pharmaceuticals
’ CMO Rob Iannone to discuss the company’s recently acquired pediatric glioma drug, and talked AI strategy with
AstraZeneca
’s head of U.S. oncology for lung cancer Arun Krishna. Dan recaps his ASCO experience
here
.
Speaking of buzzy therapeutic spaces, there was more action on the vaccines front last week as Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr.
announced
that healthy children and healthy pregnant women would no longer be advised to get vaccinated against COVID-19. However, as of publication, the CDC still recommends a COVID vaccine for healthy children but instead of a universal recommendation advises that the decision should be made between parents and healthcare providers. Against this backdrop, the FDA
signed off
on Moderna’s next-gen COVID-19 vaccine, mNEXSPIKE, for a limited population in line with its new guidelines. This was a much-needed win for Moderna, which last week had a $760 million-plus government contract for its mRNA-based bird flu vaccine
terminated
.
Also on the policy front, the Trump administration released its
Make America Healthy Again
report last week to much scrutiny after reports found studies and references that did not exist.