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 Everything You Wanted to Know About ASCO (But Were Afraid to ASCO)
We're heading into the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), which will be held June 3-7 in Chicago. The most exciting thing about the meeting will vary by your own personal interests, but there are some very helpful summaries out there that can give you a head start on digging through an avalanche of data. (Check out this broad overview from Kantar Health, this focus on melanoma from cancernetwork.com, this preview on RNAi therapeutics, and this one on leukemia drugs from MD Becker Partners.
ASCO's annual meeting covers a huge range of research, but it's still tempting to pick an annual theme (the official one, by the way, is "Patients, Pathways, Progress"). Certainly one focal point is metastatic melanoma--a deadly skin cancer that has had few useful treatment options until recently. More...
More By Karl Thiel
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Did I mention ASCO? It's not the only show in town; at the American Urological Association meeting in Washington D.C., Amgen reported some new data on Xgeva (denosumab) in bone metastases from prostate cancer. Prostate cancer will be a focus of ASCO, too, and an important question over the next couple years will be which of these therapies prove most effective...or how they might be used together. Pfizer will be presenting data on 15 compounds at ASCO, including renal cell carcinoma drug Axitinib and Crizotinib, which showed impressive results in lung cancer.
-KT
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Another wrinkle in the saga of Forest Labs CEO Howard Solomon as one of the company's shareholders, the AFL-CIO, joins the U.S. government in calling for his ouster. My favorite thing about this latest development is that the AFL-CIO, according to Pharmalot, owns just 208 shares of Forest--worth about $7,330 as I write this. Shareholders so seldom put any pressure on companies that it is great to see one using its stature, rather than its actual stakeholding, to apply some leverage. Forest's board, on the other hand, is only going to listen to numbers; embarrassment obviously isn't a big motivator. And Novartis--well, we don't know what it is those senior executives did, but whatever it was, the company won't tolerate it.
-KT
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Takeda's decision to buy Nycomed shows that a trend we remarked on a couple years ago is still alive and well: Japanese pharma companies have healthy balance sheets, a strong yen, and a need to expand internationally. The recent earthquake underscores the need of these companies to diversify their supply chains. Indeed, this isn't the only major deal this month from a Japanese pharma, or even from Takeda itself, which also made an investment in stem cell company Fate Therapeutics. Valeant's hostile bid for Cephalon was overcome by a white knight offer from Teva, so we have one less fight to watch.
-KT
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• BioMidwest (Round Lake, Illinois)
Baxter International, Inc.
Vice President, Clinical Development & Operations
Lead Clinical Development for Medical Products (e.g., product-level clinical development strategy, clinical trial design, clinical input to regulatory submissions)
Develop and execute a competency agenda that builds world class functional capabilities in Clinical Development and Clinical Operations etc.
• Biotech Bay (South San Francisco, California)
BioSearch LLC
VP Clinical Development/CMO
Dynamic biotechnology company seeks has two The Vice President/Chief Medical Officer (CMO) will be responsible for the medical leadership of the Companys product development programs. The VP/CMO will report directly to the Chief Executive Officer, will be a key member of the senior management team, will be the companys principal medical strategist and will serve as the primary medical/clinical interface and spokesperson in a wide variety of venues for the Company.
• Pharm Country (Bridgewater, New Jersey)
ImClone Systems Corporation
Assoc Vice President
Hematologist/oncologist, preferably board-certified, with experience in drug development in the setting of the pharmaceutical/ biotechnology industry to oversee and manage the international clinical development program for multiple product candidates, from early development to regulatory approval.
• Biotech Beach (Irvine, California)
Allergan Inc.
Vice President,Global Publications-Medical Affairs
The Global Vice President, Publications, in Global Medical Affairs, is the senior medical and scientific leadership position for all global publications. Position is responsible for driving cross functional and regional coordination of publications strategy (all clinical and scientific publications) in order to address scientific, clinical and organizational needs and maximize the potential for Allergan's portfolio throughout a product's lifecycle.
Get Noticed! Add your resume to the BioSpace Career Center!
See more than 5,000 job postings in the BioSpace Career Center!
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Pharm Country Career Fair
Hanover Marriott, Thursday, June 9, 2011, 11am to 4pm
. Job seekers can spend a day with HR representatives and Hiring Managers from top biotech, pharma, and medical device companies in the tri-state area.
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2011 BIO Career Fair
Grand Hyatt Washington, Monday, June 27, 2011,
2pm to 7pm. Job seekers can spend a day with HR representatives and Hiring Managers from top biotech, pharma, and medical device companies in the DC region.
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Advanced Biohealing was all set to make a bold $200 million IPO when Shire swept in and bought the company instead. Advanced Biohealing sells Dermagraft, which it acquired from Smith & Nephew which in turn had acquired it from the erstwhile Advanced Tissue Sciences. And speaking of regenerative medicine, busy Takeda invested an undisclosed amount in Fate Therapeutics, which is developing a way to make adult stem cells act more like embryonic stem cells that can be differentiated into various types.
Meanwhile, Naurex raised money for an interesting antidepressant for treatment-resistant patients: a drug in the same class as recreational the drugs PCP and ketamine. But this is only a partial activator of the receptor and doesn't appear to have the same nasty side effects. Here's hoping it works for this undertreated class of patients.
-KT
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There's nothing like bad blood between longtime partners. Bydureon, the extended release version of the diabetes drug Byetta, got shot down by FDA last year, but just last month received a positive opinion from European regulators. Now Amylin thinks Lilly is turning its back on the franchise by partnering with Boehringer Ingelheim on the competitive product linagliptin. Lilly will use the same sales force to promote the two drugs, which Amylin says is a breach of their marketing agreement--something Lilly denies. And Takeda's ongoing woes with Actos --which went off patent in January, although generics won't launch until next year -- highlights its need to build out the pipeline, a key motive for the Nycomed acquisition.
-KT
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Let the hepatitis C battle begin! FDA approved both Vertex's Incivek (telaprevir) and Merck's Victrelis (boceprevir) within days of each other. Data appears to favor Incivek as the drug of choice, but it will remain to be seen if Vertex can make that message heard over Merck's strong existing marketing presence in hep C.
Also, in its first quarter earnings release, Vivus quietly mentions plans to resubmit for U.S. approval of the weight loss drug Qnexa in a limited market: men and women not of childbearing age. This gets around the chief problem with Qnexa, namely its association with birth defects--specifically cleft palate. The company is still hoping the FORTRESS study will clear the association, but it appears to be planning for failure. FDA will likely have some rigorous approval requirements, so it will be interesting to see how this shakes out.
-KT
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Karl Thiel is an analyst for The Motley Fool, a columnist for BioWorld Today, and a contributor to Nature Biotechnology. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
You may contact Karl Thiel at Karl.thiel@biospace.com.
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