The U.S. FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) took up the matter of Oncopeptides AB’s long-storied multiple myeloma (MM) drug, Pepaxto (melphalan flufenamide), and briefing documents ahead of the meeting – which provided little cause for optimism – proved predictive of ODAC’s vote. Shares of Oncopeptides (Stockholm:ONCO) have dropped more than 64% over the past five days as investor jitters worsened.

Levena Biopharma Co. Ltd. and Sorrento Therapeutics Inc. have synthesized antibody-drug conjugates consisting of auristatin analogues covalently linked to monoclonal antibody targeting B-cell maturation protein (BCMA) through a linker.

There is still a percentage of patients with multiple myeloma (MM) who do not respond to initial therapy, and they are considered as refractory MM patients. There is a need for novel biomarkers of treatment response in refractory MM.

How to get reasonable efficacy in cancer without toxicity – problematic especially in older patients – is a dilemma made ever more poignant by the advent of CAR T therapies and bispecific antibodies, which have been showing overall response rates of about 70%, but with side effects that can severely limit their use. Invariant natural killer T cells may provide an answer, and New York-based Mink Therapeutics Inc. aims to find out.

An investor’s wish to know more about the total landscape of a drug candidate is not enough, on its own, to make a company’s disclosures about the drug and its development materially misleading. So said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in affirming the dismissal of a shareholder suit against Karyopharm Therapeutics Inc. and its executive officers.