Anyone with more than a fleeting experience of biotech investment should be familiar with the practice of post-hoc data dredging of a failed clinical trial to find hints of activity. Inflarx’s claim yesterday that its clearly negative study of IFX-1 in hidradenitis suppurativa did, after all, show robust efficacy is a particularly egregious example of this. Inflarx has moved to cast doubt on the HiSCR measure – its study’s primary endpoint, and the metric on which Abbvie’s Humira got a hidradenitis suppurativa label – and instead now tells investors to look at reduction of draining fistulas as evidence of activity. It backs this by carving out a subset of subjects with at least one draining fistula at baseline, given the highest IFX-1 dose, and claims that these yield a p value of 0.036 versus placebo. Inflarx seems to have carried out multiple post-hoc analyses to arrive at one that gave a nominal p value below 0.05, and despite the fact that this new result is meaningless until proved prospectively it calls it “statistically significant”. It is a given that this and other “multiple efficacy signals” are enough for the company, up 12% today, to continue developing IFX-1. Caveat emptor.

Brainsway’s transcranial magnetic stimulation system was approved in the US for depression in 2013, but the first data pitting it head-to-head against a different type of technology have only just emerged. An academic study compared Brainsway’s Deep TMS device, which uses a conformation of electromagnetic coils called H-1 with an unnamed system with coils arranged in a figure of eight. The 228-patient study, conducted in Croatia, found that patients treated with Deep TMS had numerically higher remission rates, the trial’s primary endpoint, than those treated with figure-8 TMS; both types of stimulation resulted in significantly better remission than medication alone. Whether the data will spur greater uptake of Deep TMS is not clear, though shareholders seem to think it might – Brainsway’s shares closed up 5% on the Tel Aviv exchange yesterday. The company is also trialling Deep TMS in smoking cessation and post-traumatic stress disorder, and is planning trials for opioid addiction, fatigue in multiple sclerosis and post-stroke rehabilitation. The system was cleared in the US for obsessive-compulsive disorder last year (Transcranial magnetic stimulators attract attention, August 21, 2018).

Pixium Vision switched to developing the sub-retinal implant Prima after its initial device, Iris II, was found to have a shorter lifespan than the group had hoped. Now data from the first feasibility trial of Prima are in, and while these are positive they have not allowed Pixium’s stock to rebound from the fall caused by the switch of devices. Prima consists of an photovoltaic chip containing 378 electrodes that is implanted under the retina. It detects light from images shot by a camera integrated into augmented reality glasses, improving vision in patients with age-related macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa. One year after the device was implanted, all five patients in the Paris-based Prima-FS trial had light perception in the central retinal area – none had had central visual activity at enrolment – meeting the study’s primary endpoint. Most of the patients could identify letters, and some sequences of letters. Crucially, there were no serious adverse events – a safety signal seen with the Orion system developed by Pixium’s main rival, Second Sight Medical Products, hurt that company back in April. Pixium’s feasibility trial will continue out to three years, and Prima is also in a similar five-patient US feasibility study.

Were it not for the lingering doubts about Macrogenics’ lead asset, margetuximab, Servier’s ending of a licensing deal for flotetuzumab yesterday would be a non-event. As it is, however, investors have another reason to fret over a share price that, since enthusiasm over margetuximab peaked in February, has slumped 40%. Flotetuzumab is an anti-CD123 bispecific, a mechanism that has proved extremely tricky to exploit without toxicities, as numerous companies have found (Xencor’s bispecific hold reignites debates over approach and target, February 21, 2019). Servier is not a major oncology player, so its decision might not mean much beyond the loss of $308m of possible milestone payments; $35m had already been received in up-front and option fees. Four years ago Servier pulled out of a separate deal covering Macrogenics’ anti-B7-H3 MAb enoblituzumab. Meanwhile, margetuximab, an anti-Her2 MAb, remains mired in concerns revealed at this year’s Asco that its highly touted Sophia trial is unlikely to show an overall survival benefit. The next evidence for or against flotetuzumab will emerge at December’s Ash conference, where a monotherapy trial in acute myelogenous leukaemia and myelodysplastic syndromes should yield updated results.

Though it is rare to see money flow from biotechs back to shareholders, a pledge to buy back £50m ($54m) in stock failed to set Vectura alight this morning. True, the UK company had trailed such a move, made possible by a $90m boost in a patent settlement with Glaxosmithkline. But this generosity is presumably of little comfort to long-term investors, who have seen Vectura lose almost half its value since it bought its respiratory rival Skyepharma in 2016. The declines are down to issues like the collapse of the asthma project VR475, which incurred a £40m charge, and a three-year battle to win approval for a Hikma-partnered Advair generic. Data are nearing from an FDA-required trial and the project, VR315, is due to be re-filed shortly, although the protracted development means that hopes are very low. A deal has also been promised for the paediatric asthma asset VR647, and a Novartis-partnered asthma project, QMV149, should be filed in the US before year end. Vectura is also looking for a new chief executive, who will presumably be charged with coming up with a new use for the company's excess cash. In the meantime, investors will be happy to have it. 

Shifting Inovio’s therapeutic cancer vaccines to the back burner makes perfect sense given the appalling track record of such approaches. However, this is not the reason cited by the company; instead, Inovio told analysts on a call today that a phase I/II trial of INO-5401 in urothelial bladder cancer was being discontinued because of competitor developments, specifically citing Seattle Genetics/Astellas’s success with enfortumab vedotin in this setting, where the asset was filed yesterday. A study of INO-5401 in glioblastoma in combination with Libtayo and the electroporated IL-12 INO-9012 continues, though Inovio is likely casting an eye at Oncosec’s underwhelming melanoma trial of Tavo, which is based on its own electroporation technology. The shift in Inovio’s body language is clear: while oncology work will continue, the main focus becomes vaccines for HPV-related conditions, and 28% of the group’s workforce is being cut – a move applauded by Stifel analysts that nevertheless sent the stock down 10% this morning. Inovio has been on a long journey, floating over 20 years ago as Genetronics and later merging with VGX Pharmaceuticals, so it is high time that it focused on something likely to become a viable commercial product.

To hear Capricor Therapeutics’ chief executive Linda Marbán tell it, the company started its phase II trial of its Duchenne muscular dystrophy candidate CAP-1002 merely hoping for a suggestion of a trend towards efficacy. The statistically significant interim data the group reported today was apparently entirely unexpected, and drove its shares up 124%, though the group's market cap remains a tiny $25m. CAP-1002 is a cell therapy based on cardiosphere-derived cells taken from donor hearts, which Capricor believes can help patients’ muscles regenerate. The Hope-2 results are particularly interesting as the trial enrolled older, more severely affected DMD patients, a group in whom gene therapies might face challenges since very large doses would be required. As positive as the Hope-2 data are, the trial is too small for the group to request accelerated approval from the FDA, Ms Marbán said on a call today. Only seven patients received CAP-1002 at the trial’s dose of 150 million cells per intravenous infusion every three months, with 10 in the placebo arm. The trial will continue until the 12-month time point, and if final results are good enough the company just might be able to file on them.

For Glaxosmithkline’s $5bn takeout of Tesaro to make sense a couple of pivotal trials of the US biotech’s Parp inhibitor, Zejula, had to succeed. The first can now be ticked off the list: Prima hit its primary endpoint, Glaxo said today, significantly extending progression-free survival in patients with ovarian cancer, regardless of their biomarker status. This is important because Lynparza, Astrazeneca and Merck & Co’s leading Parp inhibitor, is only indicated to treat BRCA-positive patients in this maintenance setting. Solo-1, the trial that won Lynparza approval here, generated a very impressive result but was started before researchers fully appreciated that Parp inhibitors had utility beyond BRCA-positive patients. Only 15% of newly-diagnosed ovarian cancers carry this particular tumour biomarker, and while these patients respond most strongly to Parp inhibition, others can also benefit. In later treatment lines Parp inhibitors are approved regardless of BRCA status but at Esmo last year, when Solo-1 was presented, doctors expressed caution about translating this to the front line setting without clear evidence (Esmo 2018 – Lynparza delivers a huge result in first-line ovarian cancer, October 21, 2018). Prima could provide this, though the full readout remains crucial. The Esmo cancer conference, which will be held in September, looks a likely venue.

The fall in big pharma stocks more or less across the board yesterday is due not so much to what the Trump administration is doing as what it might do next. The US government has called off its plans to ban the rebates drug companies pay to pharmacy benefit managers in the Medicare and Medicaid programmes, which is, in itself, pretty neutral for drug companies – and is great news for insurers, many of which own PBMs and which are trading up on the news. The danger for pharma is what the government might do instead: one possibility is that a previously shelved plan to link US drug prices to an index of prices paid in other developed countries, which are generally much lower, might be reanimated. This would hit hard. As an example, an analysis by Bernstein found that if US prices for Novo Nordisk’s key insulin and GLP1 products – which are currently three or four times higher than the European prices – were to be limited to 25% above European levels, the company’s profits would fall by approximately 40%, assuming no change in market share. Novo’s shares were down 3% yesterday.

All attempts to treat Alzheimer’s disease with anti-amyloid drugs have ended in failure, and Novartis and Amgen’s Bace1 inhibitor CNP520 is no different. The partners, along with their academic partner, the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute, have canned the asset after some patients had worsening of cognitive function. This has been seen with other Bace inhibitors; Eli Lilly cited such concerns when it scrapped a couple of similar assets last year. Also known as umibecestat, CNP520 was being tested in two phase III trials in preventative settings. The Generation S1 trial was testing CNP520 along with Novartis’s amyloid vaccine ACD106, and the Generation S2 study tested CNP520 alone; together they were set to enrol more than 3,000 patients. The situation is not great for Novartis but far worse for Amgen – to get the CNP520 collaboration Amgen granted Novartis joint marketing rights to the migraine drug Aimovig. The news raises the pressure on Biogen and Eisai, which have somewhat controversially pushed on with their Bace inhibitor, elenbecestat. This project is also in phase III, with data expected at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference next week.