A pair of good-news items from Chimerix Inc. pushed the Durham, N.C.-based company’s stock (NASDAQ:CMRX) to $2.15, closing up 64 cents, or 42%, higher as backers reacted to near-term NDA plans for smallpox countermeasure brincidofovir (BCV) and the start of a phase II/III trial with dociparstat sodium (DSTAT) in COVID-19 patients with acute lung injury (ALI).
With accelerated approval in hand for Trodelvy (sacituzumab govitecan-hziy) to treat metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (mTNBC), Immunomedics Inc. is looking ahead to data related to the next indication for the antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) – urothelial tumors – “in the near future,” Chairman Behzad Aghazadeh told investors during a conference call.
Immunomedics Inc. gained accelerated FDA clearance for Trodelvy (sacituzumab govitecan-hziy) to treat patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) who have undergone at least two prior therapies. It’s the first antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) given the go-ahead specifically in relapsed/refractory TNBC and the first anti-Trop-2 ADC bound for the market. Trodelvy, which was granted breakthrough therapy designation and priority review, moved along faster thanks to the objective response rate (ORR) and duration of response (DoR) turned up by Morris Plains, N.J.-based Immunomedics in a single-arm, multicenter phase II study. Continued approval may be contingent on verifying clinical benefit in the confirmatory phase III experiment called Ascent, recently halted by the independent data safety monitoring committee due to compelling evidence of efficacy across multiple endpoints.
The acceptance by the FDA of Prevail Therapeutics Inc.’s IND for the one-time, fast-tracked gene therapy PR-006 provided hope for 50,000 to 60,000 people in the U.S beset by frontotemporal dementia with the GRN mutation (FTD-GRN), and the New York-based company is moving ahead with a phase I/II experiment called Proclaim.
Despite the higher placebo response than a previous, identically designed experiment turned up, Cara Therapeutics Inc.’s Kalm-2 phase III study Korsuva (CR-845/difelikefalin) for injection handily reached its primary endpoint in hemodialysis patients with moderate to severe chronic kidney disease-associated pruritus (CKD-aP).
Looking ahead to COVID-19 strategies, Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), said vaccine studies might be done not in clinics but in the streets. “By definition, we’re probably not going to be able to vaccinate everyone simultaneously,” he noted.
As expected – and well ahead of the Aug. 20 PDUFA date – Bothell, Wash-based Seattle Genetics Inc. (Seagen) won FDA clearance for the oral small-molecule breast cancer therapy tucatinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor branded Tukysa.
San Francisco-based RDMD Inc. netted $14 million in series A money fueling an approach designed to generate clinical evidence that will speed drug development in rare diseases.
Arriving at MEI Pharma Inc.’s deal with Kyowa Kirin Co. Ltd., focused on phase II-stage ME-401 for B-cell malignancies, was a competitive process that brought large and midsized pharma bidders to the table, MEI Chief Operating Officer David Urso said, but the terms proposed by suitors tended to “look a lot the same.”
New York-based Immunovant Inc.’s phase IIa results with neonatal Fc receptor (FcRn)-targeting IMVT-1401 in thyroid eye disease (TED), also known as Graves’ ophthalmopathy, prompted renewed speculation about the space, hot since the approval on Jan. 21 of Tepezza (teprotumumab-trbw) from Horizon Therapeutics plc, of Dublin.
