Category → Biotech
Epizyme & Celgene to Develop Epigenetics-Based Cancer Drugs
Cambridge, Mass.-based Epizyme has scored $90 million upfront as part of a broad cancer drug development pact with Celgene. The deal adds to a spate of lucrative pacts to find compounds to modulate epigenetic targets, or enzymes that control gene expression without altering the underlying DNA.
As we wrote in last week’s cover story, DNA carries the instructions for assembling all of life’s essential building blocks, but epigenetics dictates how and when that DNA is put to work. Recently, companies have made significant process in understanding the complex biology behind epigenetic processes, while also figuring out how to design compounds that can potently block epigenetic enzymes. With the science and business rationale for pursuing epigenetic targets dovetailing, big pharma and big biotech alike are forging deep ties with the handful of companies with expertise in the field.
Under the three-year deal announced today, Celgene has the right to opt-in to the ex-U.S. rights for any unencumbered histone methyl transferase program at Epizyme. Eisai currently has the rights to Epizyme’s EZH2 inhibitor, while GlaxoSmithKline has a deep collaboration with Epizyme against undisclosed targets that would be excluded from today’s pact with Celgene.
Epizyme says the partnership makes sense because Celgene shares “our vision in oncology and epigenetics,” says Epizyme’s president and CEO Robert J. Gould. “That’s been a fundamental bedrock of our partnering strategy–to partner with people who share our enthusiasm for this space.”
Indeed, Celgene has long played in the epigenetics space, boasting two of the four currently marketed drugs that act on epigenetic targets. However, Celgene’s drugs, Istadax and Vidaza, hit first-generation epigenetic targets. Epizyme’s activities, meanwhile, center on one of the next waves of epigenetic targets: a family of enzymes called histone methyltransferases (HMTs). Of the 96 members of that family, Epizyme has identified roughly 20 HMTs for which there is a clear link to a specific form of cancer, Gould says. To date, the company has two compounds—the EZH2 inhibitor partnered with Eisai, and a DOT1L inhibitor—in preclinical studies. (Check out last week’s cover story on epigenetics for more on how Epizyme went about discovering those two compounds.)
Celgene is kicking off the pact by opting into the inhibitor of DOT1L, an HMT that is implicated in mixed lineage leukemia, a rare subtype of the blood cancer that the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society says affects about 1,500 new patients in the U.S. each year.
With each program thereafter that Celgene buys into, Epizyme could score up to $160 million in milestone payments.
The cash influx, coupled with the U.S. rights to the programs, “positions us nicely to maintain our independence, but also control our own future as a company,” Gould says. “We now have the runway to go pretty far with these programs.”
That independence is important aspect of Epizyme’s strategy of commercializing its cancer therapies in the U.S., a goal Gould says is attainable because HMT inhibitors will be used in highly specific, genetically-defined patient populations.
The Celgene deal also broadens Epizyme’s scientific horizons, Gould says. “This expands the depth of research we can do around histone methyl transferases specifically…but also gives us the opportunity to imagine what other approaches we might take that might be synergistic or additive to the HMT family.”
Gould is quick to note that in the near term, the company is focused on HMTs “until we prove these compounds are effective in these patients with genetically-defined cancer.”
Between its deals with GSK, Eisai, and Celgene, and its burgeoning pipeline, Epizyme will need to expand its operations. The current headcount stands at about 48, but Gould notes that going forward the small biotech will need to grow out its clinical development organization and, more modestly, its basic research activities.
TEDMED: Andrew Read’s Five Tips For Keeping Superbugs At Bay
Read (TEDMED)
Andrew Read thinks evolution is the best lens for staring down the superbugs. He took the stage Thursday at TEDMED, where he warned, “we’re picking a fight with natural selection.”
“Picking a fight without Darwin is like going to the moon without Newton,” Read added. “We are in the dark ages when it comes to evolutionary management.”
Read, director of Penn State University’s Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, sat down with me on Thursday and shared a few principles he thinks the scientific community should keep in mind in order to keep antibiotic resistance in check. Here are his five tips for would-be superbug slayers. Continue reading →
TEDMED and Alzheimer’s: Gregory Petsko, Reisa Sperling, and the next Al Gore
Petsko (TEDMED)
Gregory Petsko knows why he came to TEDMED. “I’m looking for Al Gore,” he told me flat-out over lunch. Folks who know Petskoknow the former Brandeis University biochemistry department chair isn’t one to mince words. And he’s nailed the reason why an academic might want to look outside traditional conferences and soak up some of the TEDMED aura. He’s looking for a charismatic champion to take up a biomedical cause: in Petsko’s case, it’s support for research in Alzheimer’s disease.
Petsko and Reisa Sperling, director of the Center for Alzheimer’s Research and Treatment at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, talked about Alzheimer’s at TEDMED on Wednesday. Both talks were cast as calls to action. Just consider the introduction Petsko got from TEDMED chair and Priceline.com founder Jay S. Walker: “This is a man who hears a bomb ticking.”
Alzheimer’s statistics are sobering and Petsko used them to dramatic effect. People who will reach 80 by the year 2050 have a 1 in 3 chance of developing the disease if nothing is done, he told the audience. “And yet I hear no clamor,” he said. “I hear no sense of urgency.”
Petsko shared some not-yet-published work with TEDMED’s audience. Continue reading →
Liveblogging First-Time Disclosures From #ACSSanDiego
Watch this space on Sunday as I cover the public unveiling of five drug candidates’ structures. I’ll be liveblogging the “First Disclosures of Clinical Candidates” symposium at the San Diego ACS National Meeting, which runs from 2PM to 5PM Pacific.
1:30PM It’s half an hour before the start of the session and the big ballroom is still pretty empty. Expect that to change in short order.
2:30PM
LX4211
Company: Lexicon Pharmaceuticals
Meant to treat: type 2 diabetes
Mode of action: dual inhibitor of sodium glucose transporters 1 and 2, which play key roles in glucose absorption in the gastrointestinal tract and kidney
Medicinal chemistry tidbits: this drug candidate had Lexicon’s chemists refamiliarizing themselves with carbohydrate chemistry. Most inhibitors of sodium glucose transporters incorporate D-glucose in some way. Lexicon’s chemists realized they could try something different– inhibitors based on the scaffold of L-xylose, a non-natural sugar. The team has already published a J. Med. Chem paper (2009, 52, 6201–6204) explaining that strategy. LX4211 is a methyl thioglycoside-the team went with a methyl thioglycoside because upping the size too far beyond a methyl lost activity at SGLT1.
Status in the pipeline: LX4211 is currently completing Phase IIb trials.
3:00PM
BMS-927711
Company: Bristol-Myers Squibb
Meant to treat: migraine
Mode of action: antagonist of the receptor for calcitonin gene-related peptide- increased levels of this peptide have been reported in cases of migraine
Medicinal chemistry tidbits: This team recently published an orally bioavailable CGRP inhibitor, BMS-846372 (ACS Med. Chem. Lett., DOI: 10.1021/ml300021s). However, BMS-846372 had limited aqueous solubility, something that might make its development challenging. To improve that solubility, the BMS team sought to add polar groups to their molecule, something that’s been tough to do with CGRP inhibitors historically. In the end, the team managed to add a primary amine to BMS-846372′s cycloheptane ring while maintaining CGRP activity, leading to BMS-927711.
Status in the pipeline: Phase II clinical trials
3:05 lots of questions from the audience for this talk! One questioner notes (as was noted in talk) that 4 CGRP inhibitors had gone before this drug in the clinic, and not made it through. Speaker notes that this candidate is more potent than others at CGRP (27 picomolar).
3:53 We’re a bit behind schedule but got plenty of good chemistry…
GSK2636771
Company: GlaxoSmithKline
Meant to treat: tumors with loss-of-function in the tumor suppressor protein PTEN (phosphatase and tensin homolog)- 2nd most inactivated tumor suppressor after p53- cancers where this is often the case include prostate and endometrial
Mode of action: inhibitor of phosphoinositide 3-kinase-beta (PI3K-beta). Several lines of evidence suggest that proliferation in certain PTEN-deficient tumor cell lines is driven primarily by PI3K-beta.
Medicinal chemistry tidbits: The GSK team seemed boxed in because in 3 out of 4 animals used in preclinical testing, promising drug candidates had high clearance. It turned out that a carbonyl group that they thought was critical for interacting with the back pocket of the PI3K-beta enzyme wasn’t so critical after all. When they realized they could replace the carbonyl with a variety of functional groups, GSK2636771 eventually emerged. GSK2636771B (shown) is the tris salt of GSK2636771.
Status in the pipeline: Phase I clinical trials
4:22
GS-9620
Company: Gilead Sciences
Meant to treat: chronic infection with hepatitis B and C viruses
Mode of action: agonist of Toll-like receptor 7, which recognizes RNA from viral sources
Medicinal chemistry tidbits: The team paid a lot of attention to particular sidechain in their drug candidates– they examined a range of pKa’s from the acidic side of the scale to the basic side, and learned that a basic amine was important for agonist activity.
Status in the pipeline: Phase Ib clinical trials
4:49
BMS-791325
Company: Bristol-Myers Squibb
Meant to treat: hepatitis C
Mode of action: inhibitor of viral NS5B replicase
Medicinal chemistry tidbits: This drug candidate is an allosteric inhibitor– early on in the program BMS researchers had evidence to suggest that allosteric inhibition of the replicase would be feasible, and would provide an alternative to the nucleoside analogs that constitute the vast majority of replicase inhibitors. The team started with fused indole lead structures which bound to the thumb site 1 allosteric site in the replicase (Bioorg. Med. Chem. Lett., DOI: 10.1016/j.bmcl.2011.03.067). Adding a morpholine amide enhanced potency, and adding substituents to it abrogated transactivation of the pregnane X receptor (PXR). Ultimately this group was replaced with a methylated piperazine, with substituents stitched together to give another ring. A cyclopropane adjusted the shape of the molecule to jibe with information gathered from an X-ray co-crystal structure.
Status in the pipeline: Phase II clinical trials
4:52 That’s it folks! Watch for additional coverage of these talks in an April issue of C&EN.
Exploring Rational Drug Design
Medicinal chemists strive to optimize molecules that fit snugly into their proposed targets. But in the quest for potency, we often overlook the local physics that govern drugs’ binding to these receptors. What if we could rationally predict which drugs bind well to their targets?
A new review, currently out on J. Med. Chem. ASAP, lays out all the computational backing behind this venture. Three computational chemists (David Huggins, Woody Sherman, and Bruce Tidor) break down five binding events from the point-of-view of the drug target: Shape Complementarity, Electrostatics, Protein Flexibility, Explicit Water Displacement, and Allosteric Modulation….whew!
Selectivity Strategies for Rational Design | Credit: Huggins, Sherman, Tidor; J. Med. Chem.
Note: Before we dive into this article, let’s clarify a few terms computational drug-hunters use that bench chemists think of differently: ‘decoy’ – a test receptor used to perform virtual screens; ‘ligand’ – the drug docking into the protein; ‘affinity / selectivity’ – a balance of characteristics, or how tightly something binds vs. which proteins it binds to; ‘allosteric’ – binding of a drug molecule to a different site on an enzyme than the normal active site. Regular readers and fans of compu-centric chem blogs such as The Curious Wavefunction and Practical Fragments will feel right at home!
We’ll start at the top. Shape complementarity modeling uses small differences in a binding pocket, such as a methylene spacer in a residue (say, from a Val to Ile swap) to dial-in tighter binding between a target and its decoy. The authors point out that selectivity can often be enhanced by considering a drug that’s literally too big to fit into a related enzymatic cavity. They provide several other examples with a ROCK-1 or MAP kinase flavor, and consider software packages designed to dock drugs into the “biologically active” conformation of the protein.
Electrostatic considerations use polar surface maps, the “reds” and “blues” of a receptor’s electronic distribution, to show how
Affinity Optimization - Black dot represents the optimal minimum energy between Coulombic forces (green) and desolvation penalty (blue) | Credit: Huggins, Sherman, Tidor; J. Med. Chem.
molecular contacts can help binding to overcome the desolvation penalty (the energy cost involved in moving water out and the drug molecule in). An extension of this basic tactic, charge optimization screening, can be used to test whole panels of drugs against dummy receptors to determine how mutations might influence drug binding.
Because target proteins move and shift constantly, protein flexibility, the ability of the protein to adapt to a binding event, is another factor worth considering. The authors point out that many kinases possess a “DFG loop” region that can shift and move to reveal a deeper binding cavity in the kinase, which can help when designing binders (for a collection of several receptors with notoriously shifty binding pockets – sialidase, MMPs, cholinesterase – see p. 534 of Teague’s NRDD review).
But these shifting proteins also swim in a sea of water and other cytoplasmic goodies. This means that drug designers, whether they like it or not, must account for explicit water molecules. The authors even suggest a sort of “on-off” switch for including the bound water molecules, but contend that more efforts should be directed to accurate modeling of water in these protein settings.
Finally, the authors weigh the effects of allosteric binding, the potential for a modeled molecule to be highly selective for a site apart from where the protein binds its native ligand. The authors consider the case of a PTP1B ligand that binds 20Å away from the normal active site, at the previously mentioned “DFG loop.” Since this binding hadn’t been seen for related phosphatases, it could then be used to control selectivity for PTP1B.
In each section, the authors provide examples of modeling studies that led to the design of a molecule. Two target classes recur often
throughout the review: HIV protease inhibitors (saquinavir, lopinavir, darunavir) and COX-2 inhibitors (celecoxib), which have all been extensively modeled.
Two higher-level modeling problems are also introduced: the substrate-envelope hypothesis, which deals with rapidly mutating targets, and tailoring molecules to take rides in and out of the cell using influx and efflux pumps in the membrane. Since different cell types overexpress certain receptors, we can use this feature to our advantage. This strategy has been especially successful in the development of several cancer and CNS drugs.
Overall, the review feels quite thorough, though I suspect regular Haystack readers may experience the same learning curve I did when adapting to the field-specific language that permeates each section. Since pictures are worth a thousand words, I found that glancing through the docking graphics that accompany each section helped me gain a crucial foothold into the text.
GSK’s R&D Review: Successes & Lessons Learned
Three years after reorganizing its discovery research activities into small, multi-disciplinary units, GlaxoSmithKline is providing a first peek at how its new approach to R&D is faring. A healthy chunk of its year-end earnings presentation yesterday was devoted to discussing the productivity of its research engine, and what can be expected out of its labs in the next three years.
As we described, the goal of its 2008 revamp was to create a biotech-like, entrepreneurial feel within the walls of a big pharma firm:
After being one of the first drug companies to create research hubs, or what it calls “centers of excellence in drug discovery,” GSK last year created “discovery performance units” (DPUs) within each hub. Each of the 38 DPUs operating now has a multidisciplinary team of up to 60 scientists focusing on a therapeutic area, a disease pathway, or some aspect of basic biology.
GSK also formed a “discovery investment board” that makes funding decisions for the research projects in each DPU. The idea is to bring diverse perspectives on the merits of each project: In addition to [GSK R&D head] Slaoui, the board includes a biotech company CEO, a senior public health official, and GSK’s heads of drug discovery, late-stage development, and business development.
DPUs are intended to operate like a biotech company housed in a big pharma firm. Much as a biotech gets funded by venture capitalists, a DPU receives an initial bolus of money and then extra cash when certain project goals are met. Each DPU had an initial review after a year of operation and will undergo another review this month, the 18-month check point. The board meets a last time at the three-year mark.
GSK says there are clear signs that the DPU approach is working. Although the company is spending less on R&D and has raised the bar for moving a drug candidate into late-stage development, it has increased the number of molecules in its late-stage pipeline, Patrick Vallance, GSK’s president of R&D told the Haystack. Under the new R&D regime, 22 molecules have moved into late-stage development, and Vallance wants to see 30 molecules pushed forward in the next three years.
And in what Vallance believes is a sign that scientists are becoming more ambitious and attempting to do genuinely novel early research, roughly 17 publications in came out of GSK’s labs last year. Prior to the DPU approach, basically no papers were being submitted to prestigious journals, he says.
The board, which had its final review in November, decided to shut down three DPUs, and create four new DPUs. Funding for six existing DPUs was upped by more than 20%, while five units saw funding decrease by more than 20%. Overall, 40 DPUs were funded for the next three-year cycle, with a budget that has remained unchanged.
So what has GSK learned at the end of three years? On a practical level, reviewing all projects on the same schedule “is just too complicated,” Vallance says.
And the largest DPUs, which had 60 to 70 scientists, need scaling back in order to maintain their focus, he says. “What some of those units did was filled the activity to meet the number of people rather than the size of the opportunity,” he says. And the number of scientists needed for a DPU is entirely project dependent, “I do think there is an upper limit, beyond which the returns become diminishing,” he adds. “When you get above 60, I don’t think you see more, I think you see less.”
The review process also brought some surprises. Some DPU heads told the board “we don’t think you should reinvest,” either because the project didn’t get as far as originally planned or the scientific problem turned out to be different than they expected, Vallance says. “The confidence of people to say, ‘This isn’t right, cut it and move on to something else,’ was a positive surprise.”
Leaders also came from unexpected places. Vallance points to the case of a bench chemist who came before the board with a proposal for a DPU that was so strong that not only did the project get funded, but the chemist is now heading it up.
Other big phama firms surely keeping a close watch on how GSK fares—and how investors respond to their pipeline progress. Since GSK unveiled the model in 2008, several others have adopted similar strategies.
*story amended on 2/9/12: Patrick Vallance is currently president of R&D for GSK.
Pharma & Biotech Job Cuts Mount in 2012
For those keeping track, yesterday’s layoffs at AstraZeneca add to an already substantial list of cuts in the pharma and biotech industries since the beginning of the year. By our tally, nearly 13,000 job cuts, many in R&D, have been announced so far–and we’re barely into February. Here’s where we’re at (and do let us know if we’ve missed any):
–AstraZeneca is chopping 7,300 jobs, including 2,200 R&D positions, by 2014. Neuroscience research is being revamped and focused on external partnerships; the company’s Montreal R&D site will be shuttered, and research activities ended at its Södertälje site in Sweden.
–Genzyme gave the pink slip to an unspecified number of R&D scientists this week. The layoffs come as Sanofi integrates its big biotech acquisition.
–Alnylam is trimming 61 jobs, or 33% of its workforce, in order to save roughly $20 million this year.
–BioSante Pharmaceuticals is shedding 25% of its staff, or 21 employees and contractors, after disappointing Phase III results for its female sexual dysfunction treatment LibiGel.
–Takeda is axing 2,800 jobs, or 9% of its workforce, following its acquisition of Swiss drugmaker Nycomed. The bulk of the layoffs, which cut across R&D, commercial, operations, and administrative positions, will occur in Europe.
–Novartis unveiled plans to shed some 1,960 positions in the U.S. as it braces for generic competition for Diovan, a blood pressure medicine that brought in more than $6 billion in 2010, and an expected drop in demand for its renin inhibitor Rasilez following questions about the drug’s safety.
–Human Genome Sciences said it would cut 150 jobs, or about 14% of its workforce, in a move that affects manufacturing, R&D, and administrative activities.
–Xoma is shedding 84 workers, or 34% of its staff, as it shifts to outsourcing late-stage and commercial manufacturing, as well as some research.
–SkyePharma is cutting 20% of the 101 employees at its site in Muttenz, Switzerland.
–Sanofi plans to layoff 100 workers at its Monteal site as part of an overhaul of its Canadian operations.
–J&J will trim 126 workers as it closes its Monreal R&D center.
Celgene & Avila Forge Permanent Ties
Today brought a spate of M&A activity in the biotech space, with Amgen unveiling a $1.2 billion bid for Micromet, and Celgene agreeing to pay up to $925 million for Avila Therapeutics. Both deals brought the acquirer a drug in development to treat blood cancers, while also adding a platform technology to their research engines.
Being all about the chemistry, The Haystack is particularly interested in the Celgene/Avila deal, which involves covalent drug development technology. Celgene is paying $350 million upfront, with the promise of up to $195 million more if Avila’s lead covalent drug candidate, AVL-292, reaches the market. Pushing other covalent drugs through the pipeline could garner Avila shareholders another $380 million.
So what is a covalent drug, anyway? As C&EN’s Lila Guterman described last fall, covalent drugs form a permanent link with their target. By comparison, most conventional drugs are designed to reversibly bind to their targets—in other words, they can stick and “un-stick” to a protein.
The beauty of a covalent drug is that its specificity and potency means it can be given in low doses. As Guterman explains, patients only be given enough of the drug for molecule to reach each target protein molecule, and then another dose only when the body has generated more of that target protein. The low dose means less potential for drug-drug interactions and off-target effects.
Indeed, for years, scientists avoided developing covalent drugs out of fear that serious toxicity will arise if a covalent drug happens to permanently stick itself to the wrong protein. Check out Guterman’s piece for a cautionary toxicity tale from none other than “Rule-of-Five” inventor (and former Pfizer researcher) Christopher Lipinski.
The current generation of covalent drugs, however, is designed to assuage those fears through their highly selective and weakly reactive nature. Avila isn’t the only one banking on better molecular design leading to successful drugs: Zafgen’s obesity drug candidate ZGN433 also covalently binds to its target, an approach that—if it works—could enable it to sidestep the side effect issues that have plagued the obesity drug space.
So are these covalent drugs worth the price tag? Avila’s pipeline is relatively young, meaning there isn’t a lot of data to go on: AVL-292 is in Phase I studies in lymphomas; a compound targeting mutant EGFR is also in Phase I trials; meanwhile, two Hepatitis C drug candidates in preclinical studies. The company has also made public preclinical date on its PI3Kα-selective inhibitor (the same target as Intellikine’s INK1117, one of the drivers behind Takeda’s $190 million acquisition of Intellikine.).
The HCV Combo Race Just Got Hotter
BMS is shelling out $2.5 billion dollars for Inhibitex, a small pharma company with a Phase II molecule for treatment of Hepatitis C (HCV). The deal adds to the scramble for HCV assets in recent months, with Gilead agreeing to pay almost $11 billion for Pharmasset in
November, and Roche’s recent purchase of Anadys. While much has been written about the merits (and price tags) of each deal, the Haystack thought it was worth taking a closer look at the chemical composition of the multi-million dollar molecules.
So what did BMS get for their money?
INX-089, Inhibitex’s lead molecule, has a common antiviral motif: a nucleoside core (the 5-membered ring sugar attached to a nitrogen heterocycle) with an amino acid based prodrug hanging off the left-hand side. Clinically-tested antivirals sharing this basic setup include IDX-184 and NM-283, both from Idenix, and PSI-352938, from Pharmasset (For an overview of the varied structures currently in development for HCV, see Lisa’s 2010 C&EN story).
INX-089 bears a close resemblance to Pharmasset’s lead nucleotide inhibitor PSI-7977. That’s not a mistake, believes ‘089 discoverer Chris McGuigan, of the Welsh School of Pharmacy. In a recent article (J. Med. Chem. 2010, 53, 4949), McGuigan himself comments “The Pharmasset nucleoside [is] rather parallel to our early work on anti-HIV ProTides.”
Wait, what are ProTides?
Both INX-089 and PSI-7977 aren’t themselves the active viral inhibitor, but phosphoramidate “ProTide” prodrugs: compounds broken down by the body into the active drug (Chem Note: PSI-7977 has single-enantiomer Sp chirality at phosphorus, while INX-189 is a mixture of diastereomers).
Once in the body, enzymes cleave the phosphoramidate group to a phosphate (PO42-). Kinases attach two more phosphate groups, and viruses let this dressed-up molecule inside, where the nucleotide warhead inhibits HCV by interfering with RNA replication (Antimicrob. Agents Chemother. 2011, 55, 1843).
A few comments on the drug itself: The similarity of the ProTide portion (left-hand side) of the molecule to PSI-7977 really is striking: swap in an isobutyl ester and a phenyl, and it’s the same beast! The more interesting switch comes on the upper-right (“eastern”) part of the structure: a protected guanosine ring. This ring harks back to guanine, one of the four common nucleic acids found in DNA.
Source: J. Med. Chem., Pharmasset
PSI-7977, meanwhile, shows off a uracil, a nucleic acid found in RNA, not DNA.
Although it’s tempting to think such similar compounds all dock into the NS5B polymerase at the active site (in the yellow “palm” of the hand-shaped enzyme), don’t be too sure – a recent paper by Pharmasset scientists (J. Med. Chem. 2012, Just Accepted) shows quite a few “Finger,” “Palm,” and “Thumb” sites. It’s not yet clear whether all nucleoside drugs bind to the active site in the same way. The authors also remark that, due to fast replication and mutation, potentially resistant strains of HCV pop up daily.
Haystack 2011 Year-in-Review
Well, 2011 is in the books, and we here at The Haystack felt nostalgic for all the great chemistry coverage over this past year, both here and farther afield. Let’s hit the high points:
1. HCV Takes Off – New treatments for Hepatitis C have really gained momentum. An amazing race has broken out to bring orally available, non-interferon therapies to market. In October, we saw Roche acquire Anadys for setrobuvir, and then watched Pharmasset’s success with PSI-7977 prompt Gilead’s $11 billion November buyout. And both these deals came hot on the heels of Merck and Vertex each garnering FDA approval for Victrelis and Incivek, respectively, late last spring.
2. Employment Outlook: Mixed – The Haystack brought bad employment tidings a few times in 2011, as Lisa reported. The “patent cliff” faced by blockbuster drugs, combined with relatively sparse pharma pipelines, had companies tightening their belts more than normal. Traffic also increased for Chemjobber Daily Pump Trap updates, which cover current job openings for chemists of all stripes. The highlight, though, might be his Layoff Project. He collects oral histories from those who’ve lost their jobs over the past few years due to the pervasive recession and (slowly) recovering US economy.. The result is a touching, direct, and sometimes painful collection of stories from scientists trying to reconstruct their careers, enduring salary cuts, moves, and emotional battles just to get back to work.
3. For Cancer, Targeted Therapies – It’s also been quite a year for targeted cancer drugs. A small subset of myeloma patients (those with a rare mutation) gained hope from vemurafenib approval. This molecule, developed initially by Plexxikon and later by Roche / Daiichi Sankyo, represents the first success of fragment-based lead discovery, where a chunk of the core structure is built up into a drug with help from computer screening.From Ariad’s promising ponatinib P2 data for chronic myeloid leukemia, to Novartis’s Afinitor working in combination with aromasin to combat resistant breast cancer. Lisa became ‘xcited for Xalkori, a protein-driven lung cancer therapeutic from Pfizer. Researchers at Stanford Medical School used GLUT1 inhibitors to starve renal carcinomas of precious glucose, Genentech pushed ahead MEK-P31K inhibitor combinations for resistant tumors, and Incyte’s new drug Jakifi (ruxolitinib), a Janus kinase inhibitor, gave hope to those suffering from the rare blood cancer myelofibrosis.
4. Sirtuins, and “Stuff I Won’t Work With – Over at In the Pipeline, Derek continued to chase high-profile pharma stories. We wanted to especially mention his Sirtris / GSK coverage (we had touched on this issue in Dec 2010). He kept up with the “sirtuin saga” throughout 2011, from trouble with duplicating life extension in model organisms to the Science wrap-up at years’ end. Derek also left us with a tantalizing tidbit for 2012 – the long-awaited “Things I Won’t Work With” book may finally be coming out!
5. Active Antibacterial Development – In the middle of 2011, several high-profile and deadly bacterial infections (Germany, Colorado, among others) shined a spotlight on those companies developing novel antibacterials. We explored front -line antibiotics for nasty Gram-negative E.coli, saw FDA approval for Optimer’s new drug Fidiclir (fidaxomicin) show promise against C. difficile and watched Anacor’s boron-based therapeutics advance into clinical testing for acne, and a multi-year BARDA grant awarded to GSK and Anacor to develop antibacterials against bioterrorism microorganisms like Y. pestis.
6. Obesity, Diabetes, and IBS – Drugs for metabolic disorders have been well-represented in Haystack coverage since 2010. Both Carmen and See Arr Oh explored the vagaries of Zafgen’s ZGN-433 structure, as the Contrave failure threatened to sink obesity drug development around the industry. Diabetes drugs tackled some novel mechanisms and moved a lot of therapies forward, such as Pfizer’s SGLT2 inhibitors, and Takeda’s pancreatic GPCR agonist. Ironwood and Forest, meanwhile, scored an NDA for their macrocyclic peptide drug, linaclotide.
7. The Medicine Show: Pharma’s Creativity Conundrum – In this piece from October, after Steve Jobs’ passing, Forbes columnist Matt Herper both eulogizes Jobs and confronts a real ideological break between computer designers and drug developers. His emphasis? In biology and medical fields, “magical thinking” does not always fix situations as it might in computer development.
We hope you’ve enjoyed wading through the dense forest of drug development with Carmen, Aaron, Lisa, and See Arr Oh this past year. We here at The Haystack wish you a prosperous and healthy 2012, and we invite you to come back for more posts in the New Year!