Drug pricing watchdog ICER said that the uncertainty in the health benefits of two potential Alzheimer’s drugs makes it challenging to assess their future cost-effectiveness, according to a draft report released Thursday morning.
While all has gone quiet on the M&A rumor front for Seagen, one of the pioneers in antibody-drug conjugates, Merck has been racking up deal after deal for ADCs out of a Chengdu, China-based partner.
After more than three decades of instituting government policies to improve clinical trial diversity, certain racial and ethnic groups, as well as adolescents, older adults, women, low-income individuals, and individuals from rural communities “remain consistently underrepresented in cancer clinical trials,” the Government Accountability Office said in a new report released this week.
Zymeworks is capping a rocky year with a committed partner.
After announcing it would dole out $50 million to become the second partner on Zymeworks’ HER2 bispecific, Jazz Pharmaceuticals was met with some questions from analysts around the financing engineering of the deal, particularly curious as to why the duo linked up before a crucial readout of the drug, known as zanidatamab.
But with a 41.3% objective response rate in a pivotal trial in biliary tract cancer earlier this week, the pair will march forward. Jazz is forking over $325 million to exclusively develop and commercialize zanidatamab in the US, Europe and Japan. If the collaborators make it to the end of the album, the payout could be $1.76 billion for Zymeworks, as well as tiered royalties between 10% and 20% on Jazz’s net sales. BeiGene holds the China, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand rights to the drug.
Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription
Unlock this story instantly and join 154,800+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it’s free.
A small Texas biotech is moving a pain candidate forward into late-stage clinical development, despite a Phase II fail.
Lexicon Pharmaceuticals told investors Wednesday that a Phase II proof-of-concept trial in postherpetic neuralgia failed to meet statistical significance.
LX9211, which targets AAK1, achieved a reduction in average daily pain score (ADPS) of 2.42 from baseline at week 6 compared to a reduction of 1.62 in the placebo arm. However, with a placebo adjusted difference of 0.80, the p-value of 0.12 made the trial and the data statistically insignificant. Significance is met if the p-value is at or below 0.05, which indicates a 95% chance that the results aren’t random.
This content was originally published here.
