Investing in biopharma has never been for the faint of heart. So headline figures unveiled from a clinical development success report during the BIO CEO & Investor Conference Feb. 17, putting the average likelihood of a drug entering phase I development ultimately achieving approval at 7.9% and the average drug development timeline at 10.5 years, appear largely unsurprising. But the addition of machine learning capabilities to the mix helped identify those factors that have the greatest impact on predictive outcome.
Aside from its place in the history books as a global pandemic that nearly locked down the world, COVID-19 could have a lasting, more positive legacy of finally opening U.S. biopharmaceutical clinical trials to greater diversity.
DUBLIN – The most solid conclusion that can be drawn from Immunic Inc.’s phase II trial of IMU-838 in hospitalized COVID-19 patients is that a reduction in the need for invasive ventilation is no longer a useful endpoint for studies of COVID-19 drugs.
Clinical updates, including trial initiations, enrollment status and data readouts and publications: Algernon, Asklepios, Astrazeneca, Biophytis, Cidara, Eli Lilly, Evgen, Immunic, Inhibikase, Kintara, Mesoblast, Mind Medicine, Moebius, Pfizer, PTC, Redhill, Salarius, Scisparc, Selecta, Silence.
HONG KONG – A Japanese phase III study of Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.’s interleukin-6 inhibitor Actemra (tocilizumab) in patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 pneumonia has read out, expanding what’s known about the drug’s use in the pandemic, which had been inconclusive until recently, though is now known to reduce mortality in the vulnerable population.
The FDA placed a partial clinical hold on atuzaginstat (COR-388) from Cortexyme Inc., of South San Francisco, stating that no new participants should be enrolled in the open-label extension portion of the phase II/III GAIN trial in mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease.
Shares of Bluebird Bio Inc. (NASDAQ:BLUE) fell 37.8% to $28.44 on Feb. 16 as the company temporarily suspended two trials of its experimental gene therapy for sickle cell disease, Lentiglobin (BB-1111), while investigating one unexpected case of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and another of myelodysplastic syndrome among participants in a phase I/II study of the candidate, called HGB-206. A second patient experienced MDS in 2018.
Amicus Therapeutics Inc.’s results from the phase III trial called Propel with AT-GAA (cipaglucosidase alfa and miglustat) for late-onset Pompe disease (LOPD) met with split opinions, though Wall Street took a decidedly dim view and left shares (NASDAQ:FOLD) to close at $12.57, down $6.16, or 33%.
BioWorld tracked a total of 295 phase I, II and III clinical news items in January, a rise of 39% compared with the number recorded during the pre-pandemic month of January 2020.
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