Conferences

Boston Pharma may be rising in the FGF21 space, while Viking could be formidable competition for Madrigal in the THRβ agonist class. Akero will soon report potentially groundbreaking data in cirrhotic NASH.

Next year will see plenty of deals in the biopharma space and a growing number of them will come from China, attendees at the Jefferies London Healthcare Conference heard.

The firm revealed that an analysis of its Phase III ESSENCE trial combining fibrosis reduction and NASH resolution showed a higher effect over placebo than in Madrigal’s pivotal trial.

Following Phase III safety and cash problems, Inventiva has its eye on lanifibranor becoming the second oral agent approved in NASH. Former Intercept CEO Mark Pruzanski is advising the effort.

At a recent conference, executives from Boehringer and Amgen laid out their expectations for the future of obesity and how they intend to navigate the changes.

The recent US presidential election was foremost on many speakers’ minds at the Galien Forum, with many expressing uncertainty about what a new Trump administration will bring in areas ranging from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to funding for the National Institutes of Health.

The Denmark-based major intends to build on its heritage in diabetes and is keen to hear from innovators in a space where prevalence is on the rise but is not being served by improved new products.

Panels at the recent BioFuture conference focused on the next breakthroughs in areas such as oncology and neurodegenerative diseases, continuing challenges to GLP-1 agonists, financing and how use of AI is taking shape.

J&J acquired Taris in 2019 to gain access to TAR-200 and its drug delivery platform. Now, early clinical data suggest the product could delay or remove the need for cystectomy in several bladder cancer settings and the US healthcare giant is eyeing multi-blockbuster sales.    

The Barcelona meeting saw early data from two candidates from Incyte and Pfizer which suggest some progress for a new drug mechanism that has so far underwhelmed.    

The company’s investment in oncology is starting to pay off, with its PD-L1/VEGF inhibitor BNT324 generating particular interest at ESMO.

The German group's goal of expanding Nubeqa into wider prostate cancer patient populations has probably been reached with the results from the Phase III ARANOTE study, while a combination of its older product Xofigo and Pfizer and Astellas’ Xtandi is set to become standard of care for another subset.

New Phase II data for the bispecific antibody show promise in colorectal cancer as the company seeks to spread the bispecific antibody’s wings. Phase III trials are on the horizon, where it will need to go up against standard of care.    

Pfizer will talk to regulators about pivotal study designs in cachexia following promising ponsegromab Phase II data, with results from a separate study in heart failure also coming soon.

The Copenhagen-headquartered group is taking its antibody-drug conjugate rinatabart sesutecan into Phase III and chief medical officer Tahi Ahmadi tells Scrip that it has the potential to treat far more women than the only currently marketed FRα-targeting ADC, AbbVie's Elahere.

Phase II data at the ESMO meeting showed promising efficacy for the drug beyond NSCLC, particularly in certain indications of colorectal and head-and-neck cancers.

AstraZeneca’s NIAGARA trial of perioperative Imfinzi in bladder cancer was positively received at the ESMO meeting but its design did not distinguish the contributions of each treatment portion to the overall effect – something that the US FDA is likely to have a view on.    

Two similarly named companies, Nuvation and Nuvalent, are racing to see who can claim best-in-class status in next-generation lung cancer therapies.

New data suggest that RP1 could become the therapy of choice in melanoma patients who do not respond to checkpoint inhibitors.    

Merck & Co has presented lots of data on its huge-earning checkpoint inhibitor at the Barcelona congress, the highlights being impressive first-time overall survival results for Keytruda in cervical cancer and early-stage triple-negative breast cancer.