Amid what one member of the European Parliament called “SMS-gate,” a Pfizer executive on Monday denied that the company’s vaccine deal with the bloc could have been negotiated via text message.
The news comes months after the European Ombudsman condemned the Commission’s handling of requests for text messages between president Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. The texts reportedly led to Pfizer’s European deal for 1.8 billion vaccine doses, the New York Times reported last April. But upon a public records request, the Commission said it hadn’t located any of the alleged texts.
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With household names like Botox and cancer treatment Keytruda, it’s no surprise that the global injectable drugs market is expected to top $1.2 trillion between 2022 and 2030. With a projected 9% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in that same period, the market is quickly expanding to provide desperately needed treatments in areas like oncology and orphan disease to psychiatric disorders and immunodeficiencies.
This article was published prior to the announcement of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Congratulations to Dr. Bertozzi, Dr. Meldal, and Dr. Sharpless.
Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for nearly 10 million deaths in 2020, which is nearly one in six deaths. Recently, we have seen incredible advances in novel cancer therapies such as immune checkpoint inhibitors, cell therapies, and antibody-drug conjugates that have revamped cancer care and improved survival rates for patients.
Groceries, home goods, auto care and … clinical trial recruitment?
Walmart has joined the wave of health and retail conglomerates jumping in on pharmaceutical research, unveiling the new Walmart Healthcare Research Institute (WHRI) on Tuesday. While the retail chain won’t be running actual trials, its initial focus will be on identifying patients who may benefit from studies in chronic conditions, CMO John Wigneswaran told Endpoints News.
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Move over Facebook, pharma marketers are getting hip to TikTok. Amgen and AstraZeneca are two of the newest — with branded work for co-marketed severe asthma med Tezspire — joining the influx of pharma companies piloting marketing efforts on the social video channel.
Amgen and AZ debuted their effort by adopting popular TikTok trends to better connect with users. For instance, the team is using the “Tell me without telling me” trend in its newest post in which a young woman says, “Tell me you have severe asthma without telling me. I’ll go first.” She then runs down a daily checklist including checking air quality, never leaving home without her inhaler and taking the Tezspire her allergist added to her treatment plan.
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As it continues to fight for its merger with Grail, an early-detection cancer test company, the sequencing behemoth Illumina is making another push into drug development.
Tuesday morning, Illumina and AstraZeneca announced a partnership for AI drug discovery. Illumina will pitch in two AI tools — PrimateAI, which predicts diseases from mutations using primate data, and SpliceAI, which predicts how pre-mRNA sequences are cut. AstraZeneca brings its own set of AI tools, including JARVIS, which looks at non-coding genes. The initial phase of the collaboration is set to go for six months, after which “the two companies will assess opportunities for a long-term partnership,” Illumina’s chief strategy officer Joydeep Goswami told Endpoints News in an email.
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Merck consistently spotlighted the multibillion-dollar sales potential of sotatercept, the lead drug in Acceleron’s pipeline, as it explained to investors why it wagered $11.5 billion to acquire the biotech late last year.
The pharma giant is now one step closer to fulfilling that potential.
As promised, Merck has unveiled topline data from the pivotal Phase III STELLAR trial, which it said met the primary endpoint as well as all but one of the nine secondary endpoints.
After a short, rocky two-year tenure highlighted by an event-killing pandemic, cutbacks and new pricing legislation widely viewed in biotech as a calamity, BIO CEO Michelle McMurry-Heath has gone on leave in what may be a step ahead of her quick exit.
In a statement issued to Endpoints News Sunday, BIO said:
The BIO CEO is currently on leave. BIO does not speculate on rumors relative to employees or personnel. BIO remains vigilant in its advocacy for biotech innovation and the wellbeing of patients.
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AstraZeneca and GSK have settled their latest talent skirmish, clearing the way for 18-plus-year AstraZeneca veteran Chris Sheldon to start a new gig at the rival pharma next month.
Sheldon and GSK confirmed the news to Endpoints News on Tuesday, more than a month after AstraZeneca was granted an injunction to stop him from starting at GSK as the next senior VP of its commercial portfolio, multiple sources including the Financial Times reported in August.
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With the number of biopharma acquisitions in 2022 so far falling below recent years, the investment bank SVB Securities on Sunday published a new report on M&A and where there may be some action in the near term.
As far as the acquirers, the report notes that large biopharma companies’ execs have a “broad appetite for M&A and BD,” and companies like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson are both carrying cash balances of about $33 billion each as of June 30, while other companies like Novartis with $20 billion, and Bristol Myers Squibb with $13 billion, can take the lead.
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The University of Kansas
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