José Baselga, acclaimed drug hunter, physician and pioneering chief of cancer R&D at AstraZeneca, died – Endpoints News

Welcome back to Endpoints Weekly, your review of the week’s top biopharmaceutical headlines. Do you want it in your inbox every Saturday morning? Current Endpoint readers can visit your reader profile to add Endpoints on a weekly basis. New to Endpoints? Sign here.

One of the coolest parts of this job is having the chance to discuss cutting-edge science and technology with the people behind them. You can see many of these conversations on this week’s schedule. – Amber Tong

Merck’s C-cuite move

On the heels of Roger Perlmutter and Ken Frazier’s match, Michael Nally left his post as director of marketing at Merck for greener pastures. Supposedly on the run for CEO when Frazier retired, Nally ended up losing to the CFO Robert Davis, which is now leading a new C-suite with Dean Li as head of R&D and Frank Clyburn, inaugural president of the global oncology business and, most recently, commercial director, in the previous position of Nally.

Eli Lilly sparks Alzheimer’s controversy

Nothing arouses enthusiasm and controversy as instantly and intensely as Alzheimer’s – as Eli Lilly demonstrated again with the presentation of mixed results from his Phase II trial of donanemab. While the pharmaceutical giant announced a statistically significant result for the unconventional primary outcome it chose, even optimists were cautious to jump to conclusions, while critics pointed to the meh numbers of secondary outcomes (which represented more traditional metrics used in previous studies) ) and side effects. Lilly, however, said the data is “tremendously important” and is optimistic about its future turning point before going to the regulators – when they may also have a precedent in Biogen’s aducanumab.

FTC promises crackdown on pharmaceutical mergers and acquisitions

Rebecca Kelly Slaughter did not measure words when invoking pharmaceutical megamergers. Now, as interim president of the FTC, she is promising to “rethink” the antitrust review approach, creating an international working group to review these negotiations and promising to consider new business proposals in the light of conducts such as pricing, reverse payments and other regulatory abuses. The group will consist of state attorney generals, the Department of Justice, as well as regulatory counterparts from the United Kingdom, Europe and Canada. At least one major acquisition may be at stake.

FDA holds the Covid-19 line of antibodies

Emerging variants of the coronavirus are threatening to undermine the three antibody treatments of Eli Lilly and Regeneron that have been authorized for emergency use, and the FDA is promising to stay on top of that. The US government is no longer distributing Lilly’s bamlanivimab in California, Arizona and Nevada because of the prevalence of a viral variant, interim commissioner Janet Woodcock said a meeting of doctors. And after launching a letter requiring the two companies to monitor the activities of their drugs, their agency detailed the available data on the performance of bamlanivimab alone, bamlanivimab plus etesevimab and the imdevimab / casirivimab cocktail.