Some of the biggest news and trends captured in PharmaVoice’s newsletter this week. Sign up here to receive the newsletter daily.
The end of MAHA?
This week’s midterm elections didn’t just deliver a stunning victory to Democrats — it signaled a rebuke of some Republican policies like the Make America Healthy Again agenda that has dominated health initiatives under HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Iowa’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn, for example, was a vocal champion of MAHA who promised to ban COVID-19 vaccines and was joined by Kennedy at a campaign rally. Lahn lost by 11 points to Democratic challenger, Rob Sand.
That’s not the only sign there could be trouble in the water for HHS’ leader. Several Democratic Senate candidates who won this week have been outspoken critics of Kennedy or called for his impeachment. This week, we dove deeper into which newly elected lawmakers could now come after Kennedy and the other pharma and healthcare issues Democrats want to tackle.
Inovio’s breakthrough FDA win
The FDA recently greenlit the first plasmid DNA-based immunotherapy for a rare condition linked to HPV infections.
The treatment, which the agency called “groundbreaking,” was developed by Inovio Pharmaceuticals for a condition that causes small, wart-like growths in airways and on vocal cords that are typically removed through surgery.
But that breakthrough and the approval don’t mean the drug will win quick market traction, especially since it won the nod through the FDA’s accelerated pathway. That speedier road to approvals can sometimes trigger increased scrutiny from healthcare payers and investors. This week, we looked at how pharma companies can address that challenge during clinical development.
J&J’s ‘game changer’ cancer drug
J&J's $3 billion acquisition of Halda Therapeutics recently delivered an early stage clinical win. An experimental prostate cancer candidate at the center of J&J's Halda takeover showed an overall response rate of 75% in one formulation of the drug in a small phase 1 study.
The treatment was developed with Halda's regulated induced proximity targeting chimera (RIPTAC) platform, which leverages what the company calls a novel mechanism to both disrupt cancer cell function and trigger cancer cell death. Leernik analyst David Risinger said the candidate could be a "game changer for the treatment of prostate cancer and for J&J’s oncology franchise prospects."
Like all large pharmas, J&J is continuously restocking its pipeline through these kinds of acquisitions. But J&J has also built one of the largest incubator programs in the biz to find cutting-edge science and bring it into the fold. How well is its incubator program working? This week, we took a look.
