WELCOME TO FIERCE LIFE SCIENCES WEEKLY DIGEST After the FDA granted 55 new drug approvals last year, what are the potentially most lucrative green lights on the horizon? For 2022, the top 10 therapies are aimed at an eclectic mix of targets—from Alzheimer’s and diabetes to psoriasis and lung cancer—and are set to bring in a collective $26.9 billion over the next few years. Meanwhile, Bayer has poached a GSK exec to serve as its new oncology head, as it preps a potential cancer blockbuster drug of its own. And Pfizer saw a rare setback in COVID-19, halting the development of an intravenous sibling to its Paxlovid antiviral. Those stories plus our top reads of the week follow below. | |
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Featured Story | By Angus Liu Oncology is hardly what Bayer is known for. But the German drugmaker has raided GlaxoSmithKline—which is itself reestablishing a cancer foothold—for a new leader in the field. read more |
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Top Stories Of The Week By Nick Paul Taylor Add Pfizer to the long list of victims of ACTIV-3. While the Big Pharma has enjoyed unparalleled success in COVID-19, it was unable to buck the trend in the NIH study of hospitalized patients and has stopped development of Paxlovid’s intravenous sibling PF-07304814. read more By Ben Adams After 55 new drug approvals at the FDA last year, biopharma and the U.S. agency are still going all guns blazing in getting new therapies out to patients. But what are the most hotly tipped—and potentially most lucrative—approvals on the horizon for 2022? read more By Kyle LaHucik Editas Medicine has fired Chief Medical Officer Lisa Michaels, M.D., just 15 months into her tenure at the gene editing company. read more By Nick Paul Taylor Pfizer is taking its Valneva-partnered Lyme disease vaccine into phase 3. With midphase data supporting a three-dose series, the allies plan to kick off a phase 3 clinical trial of the regimen in the third quarter. read more By Angus Liu An FDA rebuff looks almost certain for Eli Lilly and partner Innovent Biologics’ PD-1 inhibitor Tyvyt as an overwhelmingly negative internal FDA review ahead of an advisory committee meeting suggests the agency is unwilling to consider a drug solely based on clinical data from China. read more By Eric Sagonowsky With Bristol Myers Squibb only a month away from biopharma's biggest loss of exclusivity this year, industry watchers are eager for any clues about how the company's new and future medicines will perform on the market. The drugmaker has already launched two new CAR-T products, Breyanzi and Abecma, and now it's busy scaling up on the manufacturing front in a bid to meet early demand. read more By Andrea Park For all of 2022, ZimVie is expecting to rake in revenues of $1 billion, the same amount the dental and spine businesses registered under the Zimmer Biomet umbrella in 2021. read more By Ben Adams A day before announcing its 2021 earnings Friday, Sanofi dropped some unexpected news: It was swapping corporate logos and culling the Genzyme and Pasteur names as part of a unification push. It's the natural outgrowth of a new-ish regime under CEO Paul Hudson—and a pandemic where pharma names have become iconic. read more By Angus Liu Scientists at Duke University have devised a promising method to restore normal electrical conduction in the heart through a gene therapy carrying modified bacterial genes. The approach could potentially treat cardiac arrhythmias, the team believes. read more By Fraiser Kansteiner The news that Johnson & Johnson stopped making its pandemic vaccine at a key European plant came as a bit of a shock. Not to worry, though, the company says—the production pause was all part of the plan and should be over by next month. read more Resources Sponsored by: Blue Matter, strategic consultants in the life sciences What’s in store for the CNS therapeutics market in 2022? This paper looks ahead in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, DMD, psychiatric disorders, pain, and more. Sponsored by: Thermo Fisher Scientific Learn how a CDMO partnered with Thermo Fisher Scientific to manage high-volume process liquid and buffer preparation scale-up. Download the free case study from Thermo Fisher Scientific. Sponsored by: Thermo Fisher Scientific A variety of genetic analysis methods are valuable in ensuring that ex vivo human cells to be used for cell-based therapies are correctly identified, have the correct characteristics, and are free of contaminants. Sponsored by: IQVIA Learn how to elevate your omnichannel marketing strategy with Next Best - a combination of data and analytics, deployed to facilitate decision making. Sponsored by: Catalent Biologics Ypsomed and Catalent Biologics experts discuss strategies for integrated PFS manufacturing and auto-injector assembly to accelerate timelines and more in this webinar. Sponsored by: Catalent Biologics Learn how formulation development for a PFS affects manufacturing to drive the industry toward optimizing delivery of injectable products and, ultimately, improving patient care. Sponsored by: Thermo Fisher Scientific Learn how to develop a high-performing supply chain for cGMP chemicals used throughout your biologics workflow. Download the free whitepaper from Thermo Fisher Scientific. Sponsored by: Box Read Get to Know Cloud Content Management for Life Sciences and learn how to eliminate silos across all workflows, from R&D to commercialization. | 
