Roche
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For the second time in a week, Zealand Pharma’s weight loss pipeline has delivered mixed results, this time in a Phase 2 trial for the Roche-partnered asset petrelintide.
After a series of clinical-stage failures, Alector is resetting around its preclinical blood-brain barrier delivery technology, securing a big pharma partnership along the way.
Roche’s anti-myostatin therapy emugrobart is unlikely to elicit meaningful weight loss, according to an interim mid-stage analysis, prompting the pharma to return the asset rights to its subsidiary Chugai Pharmaceutical.
Genentech’s agreement with Earendil Labs came the same day its parent company, Roche, inked a cardiometabolic and renal deal with Atavistik Bio for up to $2 billion.
The new partnership follows Roche’s recent R&D expansion in Boston focused on development for cardiovascular, renal and metabolic diseases.
A late-stage test of Roche and Ionis Pharmaceuticals’ sefaxersen showed that the drug reduced protein in the urine, which suggests the RNA-targeting therapy could improve kidney function and delay transplant.
As pharmas reshore manufacturing, they’re squaring off with each other to find the right personnel to staff up their plants. That task is challenging given the limited talent pool, difficulty filling critical roles and, in some cases, competition from data centers.
The mid-stage readout is one link in a chain of catalysts that analysts were watching for this year from Roche’s metabolic pipeline, which features assets from the $2.7 billion acquisition of Carmot Therapeutics as well as partner Zealand Pharma.
The partners will focus R&D efforts on immunological and inflammatory conditions using Dualitas’ DualScreen Bispecific Discovery Engine platform.
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