Infectious disease
Sales of assets from Seagen and Biohaven grew in the third quarter, but it wasn’t enough for Pfizer to overcome declines across the Prevnar and COVID franchises.
The approval of Hibsago has created a new market for a handful of biopharmas, including Gilead, Arrowhead, and Vir, to fill in.
Hibsago’s approval—a functional cure for certain patients with a hepatitis B infection—further validates Ionis Pharmaceuticals’ antisense platform, which has already generated two other new drug approvals this year.
After Abogen Biosciences’ COVID shot missed the commercial window, the big question was whether its mRNA technology could create value beyond vaccines. Novartis’ $575 million upfront commitment is the clearest external validation yet of that broader therapeutic potential.
VAX-31 beat Pfizer and Merck’s established pneumococcal conjugate vaccines in a Phase 3 trial, exceeding investors’ most ambitious scenario and setting Vaxcyte up to challenge the Big Pharmas in a market worth $8 billion.
The FDA in February slapped Moderna’s vaccine with a refusal-to-file letter—though the agency backtracked a few days later and accepted a revised submission for review. An advisory committee in June unanimously backed mFLUVISA’s approval.
Moderna’s norovirus vaccine failed in a Phase 3 trial, but the company still has faith in an ambitious revenue growth target thanks to ex-U.S. vaccine sales and a unanimous FDA adcomm win for mFLUSIVA.
After being rejected in June 2022, GSK paid Spero Therapeutics $66 million for an exclusive worldwide license to develop and commercialize the drug. It’s the second oral antibiotic GSK has brought to market since the beginning of last year.
Improved survival on display at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago; Pfizer’s unusual pact with China’s Innovent highlights a new type of collaboration; Eli Lilly continues its nonstop deal streak, including with Chinese biotechs; and looking ahead to this weekend’s American Diabetes Association meeting.
The antisense oligonucleotide was even more effective in patients with relatively low viral activity. More than one-quarter of these individuals had undetectable levels of the virus in the blood for at least six months after stopping treatment.
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