Novo Nordisk Algeria

Gen­mab of­ten talks about its “knock-your-socks-off” an­ti­bod­ies — and now the term is get­ting its own lo­go and cor­po­rate cam­paign. The teal and pur­ple lo­go for the acronym KYSO — Gen­mab pro­nounces it “ky-so” — de­buts on Wednes­day and comes on the heels of Gen­mab’s new­ly an­nounced 2030 vi­sion. That as­pi­ra­tion aims to ex­pand Gen­mab’s drug de­vel­op­ment be­yond on­col­o­gy to in­clude oth­er se­ri­ous dis­eases, while al­so dou­bling down on its own drug de­vel­op­ment. To date, Gen­mab on­ly mar­kets one of its KYSO meds — Tiv­dak, ap­proved last year to treat cer­vi­cal can­cer with part­ner Seagen — while No­var­tis, Hori­zon and Janssen out-li­cense and mar­ket Gen­mab co-de­vel­oped drugs Arz­er­ra, Te­pez­za and Darza­lex, re­spec­tive­ly. “We use KYSO of­ten in our every­day speak at Gen­mab. But, that said, there was still quite a bit of con­ver­sa­tion around now that Gen­mab is evolv­ing to bring its own med­i­cines to pa­tients, do we still feel that KYSO is rel­e­vant? And every­one unan­i­mous­ly agreed that we should re­al­ly own it,” said Marisol Per­on, SVP of com­mu­ni­ca­tions and cor­po­rate af­fairs. Jan van de Winkel Gen­mab CEO Jan van de Winkel in­tro­duced the 2030 vi­sion in a LinkedIn post fol­low­ing the com­pa­ny’s Q2 re­sults and not­ed that KYSO is “a way for us to ex­press how unique the an­ti­bod­ies that Gen­mab’s team has cre­at­ed are and will be in the fu­ture.” Oth­er C-suite ex­ec­u­tives will al­so talk up Gen­mab’s 2030 vi­sion and KYSO on so­cial me­dia and oth­er chan­nels as the com­pa­ny rolls out the KYSO cam­paign, Per­on said. The new lo­go is be­ing added to cor­po­rate decks, web­site and com­mu­ni­ca­tions ma­te­ri­als, in­clud­ing videos to help brand KYSO as part of the broad­er vi­sion. Gen­mab, Seagen want cer­vi­cal can­cer to be seen in new 'Ce­Me' cam­paign along with pa­tient ad­vo­cates The “Y” in­side the new KYSO lo­go is pur­pose­ly craft­ed to mim­ic the shape of an an­ti­body. It was craft­ed us­ing the two col­ors of teal (Gen­mab’s cor­po­rate lo­go col­or) and pur­ple in a vi­su­al nod to Gen­mab’s dual tar­get­ing an­ti­bod­ies, she said. The un­der­ly­ing bold promise of KYSO is al­so meant to set Gen­mab apart from more typ­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive bio­phar­mas. “It’s al­ready part of how we de­scribe our sci­ence, how we de­scribe our an­ti­body med­i­cines, so we de­cid­ed to go for it,” Per­on said. “Gen­mab is quite unique in its cor­po­rate cul­ture and we’re very proud of our sci­ence. We de­cid­ed to con­tin­ue to use it not just our­selves, but ab­bre­vi­ate it and re­al­ly own it.” How­ev­er, the new push doesn’t mean Gen­mab is ditch­ing part­ner­ships with oth­er phar­mas. It’s cur­rent­ly ready­ing a bi­o­log­ics ap­pli­ca­tion for the FDA for its B-cell lym­phoma can­di­date ep­cori­ta­m­ab co-de­vel­oped with Ab­b­Vie and re­cent­ly ex­pand­ed its agree­ment with BioN­Tech to joint­ly de­vel­op and mar­ket can­cer im­munother­a­pies. Gen­mab has eight an­ti­bod­ies in clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment through part­ner­ships with Ab­b­Vie, BioN­Tech and Seagen or through out-li­censed agree­ments, in­clud­ing with Janssen and No­vo Nordisk.

Af­ter li­cens­ing a failed Roche schiz­o­phre­nia drug last year, Disc Med­i­cine is go­ing pub­lic via a re­verse merg­er with Gem­i­ni Ther­a­peu­tics. Georges Gemayel The com­bined com­pa­ny, while still named Disc Med­i­cine, will trade un­der the stock sym­bol $IRON , in ref­er­ence to Disc’s line­up of ther­a­pies for blood iron dis­or­ders. Along­side the merg­er, Disc has se­cured $53.5 mil­lion in an­oth­er fi­nanc­ing round, build­ing on the $90 mil­lion Se­ries B it raised in Sep­tem­ber. Pri­or to the re­verse merg­er, Gem­i­ni was in strate­gic re­view mode. The biotech, which had gone pub­lic in a $216 mil­lion SPAC flip with Jim Tanan­baum’s Fore­site Cap­i­tal two years ago, had cut 80% of its staff, axed sev­er­al ex­ecs, in­clud­ing CEO Ja­son Meyen­burg, and punt­ed all of its pipeline save for one pre­clin­i­cal can­di­date. Gem­i­ni ex­ec­u­tive chair Georges Gemayel said in a state­ment: Gem­i­ni’s strate­gic re­view was a thor­ough and thought­ful process. We be­lieve that this trans­ac­tion presents an ex­cit­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty for our share­hold­ers, as Disc has built a di­ver­si­fied, clin­i­cal-stage pipeline of prod­uct can­di­dates, and we be­lieve in the abil­i­ty of Disc’s ex­pe­ri­enced man­age­ment team to lead the com­bined com­pa­ny. We look for­ward to its con­tin­ued suc­cess. An­oth­er burned-out SPAC biotech rais­es the white flag as CEO de­parts, strate­gic re­view be­gins Disc, on the oth­er hand, al­so be­gan a Phase II tri­al on Wednes­day in Aus­tralia for its for­mer Roche drug, tak­ing it in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion from its pre­vi­ous schiz­o­phre­nia in­di­ca­tion. The now pub­lic biotech is look­ing at two rare blood dis­eases — ery­thro­poi­et­ic pro­to­por­phyr­ia and X-linked pro­to­por­phyr­ia. Disc al­so has an ane­mia drug li­censed from Ab­b­Vie cur­rent­ly in an ear­ly-stage tri­al. Disc’s new round of fi­nanc­ing fea­tured many of the same names as its last round, with Ac­cess Biotech­nol­o­gy lead­ing the way and Or­biMed, At­las Ven­ture, 5AM Ven­tures, No­vo Nordisk’s in­vest­ment arm, Ar­ix Bio­science, Rock Springs Cap­i­tal, and Janus Hen­der­son In­vestors par­tic­i­pat­ing as well. Ac­cord­ing to the press re­lease, Disc’s run­way now to­tals around $175 mil­lion and goes out to 2025.

Last summer, some of the world’s top drugmakers took matters into their own hands and tried to halt the ballooning of a federal health program that requires the companies to offer steep discounts on their products to contract pharmacies working with hospitals that primarily treat low-income patients. Companies like Novartis and Eli Lilly raised concerns that the program, known as 340B, had grown beyond what it was initially tasked to do. They also explained how the program was lining the pockets of these hospitals. The hospitals, meanwhile, denounced the unilateral moves by the drugmakers to stop offering the lowered prices to contract pharmacies and complained to HHS’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which runs the 340B program. Diana Espinosa On Monday, HHS took the side of the hospitals. HRSA Acting Administrator Diana Espinosa sent identical letters to AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi and United Therapeutics, explaining how the administration has determined that their policies that place restrictions on 340B program pricing related to contract hospital pharmacies are in direct violation of the 340B statute. “Nothing in the 340B statute grants a manufacturer the right to place conditions on its fulfillment of its statutory obligation to offer 340B pricing on covered outpatient drugs purchased by covered entities,” Espinosa’s letter says. “Furthermore, the 340B statute does not permit manufacturers to impose conditions on covered entities’ access to 340B pricing, including the production of claims data.” Espinosa also explained how if the companies claim their restrictive actions are to prevent diversions and duplicate discounts, there’s a mechanism by which they can address these concerns with an audit and submitting a claim through an Administrative Dispute Resolution process. The letters also tell the companies that they “must immediately begin offering” covered outpatient drugs at the 340B ceiling price to covered entities through their contract pharmacy arrangements, regardless of whether they purchase through an in-house pharmacy. Sanofi said in an emailed statement that it supports the core objective of the 340B program to increase access to outpatient drugs for uninsured and vulnerable populations. “However, waste and abuse in the form of duplicate discounts – when manufacturers pay Medicaid rebates on 340B-priced drugs – has become increasingly prevalent in recent years with over 30% of Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) audits of covered entities in 2018-2019 finding Medicaid duplicate discounting,” the company said. Sanofi last October launched an initiative to limit the use of contract pharmacies and collect limited, de-identified, claims data on 340B-priced drugs dispensed by contract pharmacies. Lilly said in a statement that it “has continued to offer 340B ceiling prices to all covered entities, and believes that patients – not large, for-profit contract pharmacies — should benefit from those 340B drug discounts.” And Novartis said it will give the letter a thoughtful review and respond to HRSA. The other companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the biopharma industry group PhRMA also expressed concerns with the 340B program. Nicole Longo “We continue to have concerns with the increasing number and role of contract pharmacies in the 340B program and the lack of evidence that their participation in 340B has improved patients’ access to medicines. The fact is that contract pharmacies were never authorized by Congress in statute, nor does the 340B statute require manufacturers to ship 340B medicines to contract pharmacies,” said PhRMA spokesperson Nicole Longo. “Contract pharmacies only appear in sub-regulatory guidance, which cannot impose any binding requirements on the public and lack the force and effect of law. Past reports from independent government watchdogs have shown there is little to no oversight of contract pharmacies and no way of ensuring covered entities are using the program to the benefit of America’s vulnerable patients. That’s why we are advocating for meaningful improvements to the program that ensure patients directly benefit from the tens of billions of dollars in discounts that manufacturers provide each year,” she added. Others representing the hospital industry were pleased by the letters from HRSA. “As we have been saying for nearly a year, the 340B statute requires drug manufacturers participating in the program to provide discounted prices to support the care of patients. The denial of these discounts has damaged providers and patients and must stop. It is vital that these companies immediately begin to repay the millions of dollars owed to these providers,” 340B Health, a nonprofit membership organization of more than 1,400 public and private non-profit hospitals and health systems, said in a statement.