July 27, 2020 - Fierce Pharma
For any drugmaker, taking a med to the billion-dollar sales mark—also known as a blockbuster—is a massive achievement in its own right. But for the pharmaceutical industry's bestselling drugs, some of which are blockbusters many times over, the bar is set much higher.
Things change quickly in pharma, but 2019 was much the same as past years in one notable way: In terms of sales, it's AbbVie's megablockbuster Humira and everyone else. But with Humira biosimilar challengers hitting abroad for the first time in 2019—and U.S. copycats right around the corner in 2023—other top sellers are eyeing their march to the top.
July 28, 2020 - Fierce Pharma
Moderna announced early Monday that, alongside a near half-billion extra in Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority dollars, it has started a boosted 30,000-patient phase 3 for its vaccine; not to be left out, Pfizer and BioNTech announced after-hours that they too were starting a late-stage attempt.
Unlike Moderna, however, the partners have four shots on target; we’ve already seen early data out from one, which showed an immune response and a manageable safety profile, but now the partners are putting forward a new shot on goal, which they think is better.
July 30, 2020 - Fierce Pharma
It was a little more than a month ago, at the virtual BIO conference, that Pfizer’s chief business officer John Young said the company wasn’t thinking about a return on investment for its rapidly developed COVID-19 vaccine. Instead, he said, “finding medical solutions to this crisis" was a Pfizer priority. But now that the company has moved into phase 3 trials of its BioNTech-partnered vaccine and scored a $1.95 billion supply deal with the U.S. government, Pfizer seems to be changing its tune.
July 30, 2020 - Fierce Biotech
F-star Therapeutics is set to merge with Spring Bank Pharmaceuticals, giving it a Nasdaq listing to support the advance of its pipeline of bispecific antibodies. The
merger
comes months after a death in Spring Bank’s phase 2b hepatitis B trial torpedoed the biotech’s stock.
Spring Bank responded to the discontinuation of its lead program by pivoting to focus on early-phase STING agonist SB 11285. A clinical trial of the intravenous drug in solid tumor patients has advanced since then, opening up additional dose cohorts and a checkpoint inhibitor combination arm en route to an anticipated late-2020 data drop. But the biotech remains deep in penny stock territory.