Oral drug for diabetic retinopathy flunks PhII, but biotech wants to go … – Endpoints News

When you’re trying to develop the first oral treatment for diabetic patients with eye disease, a Phase II flop need not be the end of the road — at least according to Ocuphire Pharma.
The Farmington Hills, MI-based biotech reported that its drug has missed the primary endpoint in the ZETA-1 trial for diabetic retinopathy, failing to help enough patients achieve a two-step improvement in the study eye on the diabetic retinopathy severity scale (DRSS) at week 24.
Unlock this story instantly and join 157,400+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it’s free.
George Scangos, one of the all-time great biotech CEOs, says the time has come to turn over the reins one last time.
The 74-year-old biotech legend spent close to three decades in a CEO post. The first was at Exelixis — which is still heavily focused on a drug Scangos advanced in the clinic. The second “retirement” was at Biogen, where he and his team were credited with a big turnaround with the now fading MS blockbuster Tecfidera. And the third comes at Vir, where he traded in his Big Biotech credentials for a marquee founder’s role back on the West Coast, hammering out a Covid-19 alliance with Hal Barron — then R&D chief at GSK — and breaking new ground on infectious diseases with some high-powered venture players.
Unlock this article along with other benefits by subscribing to one of our paid plans.
Magenta Therapeutics is pausing an early-stage clinical trial after a patient died. The death was deemed to be possibly related to its drug, MGTA-117.
The biotech said the pause of the Phase I/II trial is voluntary and gives it time to review all available data before deciding what to do next. It’s also reported the known information to the FDA.
The dose-escalation trial was designed to test whether MGTA-117, an antibody-drug conjugate, could serve as a more targeted alternative to high-intensity chemotherapy as a conditioning agent for cancer patients who are set to receive a stem cell transplant. It recruited patients with relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome.
The FDA hasn’t detected any potential safety signals, including for stroke, in people aged 65 years and older who have received Pfizer’s bivalent Covid booster, one senior official told members of the agency’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) on Thursday.
The update comes as the FDA and CDC investigate a “preliminary signal” that may indicate an increased risk of ischemic stroke in older Americans who received Pfizer’s updated shot.
Last July, Jeanne Loring stood on a dirt road surrounded by Florida swampland and watched as a nearby SpaceX rocket blasted into the sky. The payload included a very personal belonging: cell clusters mimicking parts of her brain.
For more than two decades, Loring has been at the forefront of a stem cell field that always seems on the brink of becoming the next thing in medicine, but has been slow to lift off.
Unlock this article along with other benefits by subscribing to one of our paid plans.
Bristol Myers Squibb is looking to expand Breyanzi into more indications — and the pharma’s newest data readout makes progress on that front.
The Big Pharma put out word Thursday that the CAR-T cell therapy met the primary endpoint of complete response rate compared to historical control in a subset of patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) that were refractory to a BTK inhibitor and pretreated with a BCL-2 inhibitor.
The FDA has stopped use of another drug as a result of the new coronavirus variants. On Thursday, the agency announced that AstraZeneca’s antibody combo Evusheld, which was an important prevention option for many immunocompromised people and others, is no longer authorized.
The FDA said it made its decision based on the fact that Evusheld works on fewer than 10% of circulating variants.
Evusheld was initially given emergency authorization at the end of 2021. However, as Omicron emerged, so did studies that showed Evusheld might not work against the dominant Omicron strain. In October, the FDA warned healthcare providers that Evusheld was useless against the Omicron subvariant BA.4.6. It followed that up with another announcement earlier this month that it did not think Evusheld would work against the latest Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5.
A small biotech looking to carve a lane in the tRNA field has folded, an investor and a co-founder confirmed to Endpoints News.
Similar to Flagship’s Alltrna and other upstarts like Takeda-backed hC Bioscience, the now-shuttered Theonys was attempting to go after transfer RNA, seen as a potential Swiss Army knife in the broader RNA therapeutics space. The idea is that one tRNA drug could be used across a galaxy of disorders and diseases.
Unlock this story instantly and join 157,400+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it’s free.
Aridis Pharmaceuticals’ monoclonal antibody missed the bar in a Phase III test in ventilator-associated pneumonia caused by the gram-positive bacteria S. aureus, the company announced Wednesday. 
But Aridis is planning for a second Phase III study anyway once it discusses the findings with the FDA and the European Medicines Agency. Execs blamed recruitment challenges stemming from Covid-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the miss, cutting their enrollment target in half.
XyloCor Therapeutics says patients with heart disease who got its gene therapy could exercise for longer and had fewer chest pain attacks. The biotech announced it completed a Phase I/II trial of the gene therapy Thursday morning, and plans to move forward with a pivotal trial.
In the Phase II portion of the trial, 28 patients with angina (or chest pain) caused by coronary artery disease and who had no other treatment options were enrolled and were given the highest tested dose from the first part of the trial. Patients were followed for six months.
Bioscience & Technology Business Center
The University of Kansas
Lawrence, Kansas<!–
2029 Becker Drive,
(785) 813-1733 –>
© Endpoints Company 2023
If you’re already an Endpoints subscriber, enter your email below for a magic link that lets you log in quickly without using a password. Please note the magic link is one-time use only and expires after 24 hours.
We’ll e-mail you a link to set a new password. Please note this link is one-time use only and is valid for only 24 hours.
ENDPOINTS NEWS Daily at 11:30 AM ET
EARLY EDITION Daily at 7:15 AM ET
ENDPOINTS PHARMA Daily at 2 PM ET
ENDPOINTS MARKETING RX Tue at 2 PM ET
ENDPOINTS FDA+ Wed at 2 PM ET
ENDPOINTS MANUFACTURING Thu at 2 PM ET
ENDPOINTS WEEKLY Sat at 6 AM ET

source