Good morning, everyone, and welcome to another working week. We hope the weekend respite was relaxing and invigorating, because that oh-so familiar routine of deadlines, online meetings, and phone calls has predictably returned. But what can you do? The world, such as it is, continues to spin. So time to give it a nudge in a better direction by brewing cups of stimulation. Our choice today is hot buttered rum — a double shot for the needy neurons. Meanwhile, here are a few items of interest to start you on your journey, which we hope is meaningful and productive. Best of luck, and do keep in touch. …
Patients with a highly aggressive form of breast cancer will likely have new treatment options for the first time in years after AstraZeneca and Gilead Sciences both presented successful trial results, dual achievements that will also leave clinicians having to figure out which drug to choose when treating triple-negative tumors, STAT explains. Both studies tested what’s known as an antibody-drug conjugate compared to traditional chemotherapy regimens as a first-line medicine in patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer who could not receive an immunotherapy. The women largely were not eligible for treatments like checkpoint inhibitors because their tumors did not express the protein that the drugs target. For these patients, there has not been a new first-line drug approved in over a decade. Patients with triple negative breast cancer make up about 10% to 20% of those diagnosed.
Over the last year, venture capitalist Noubar Afeyan has watched his signature creation, Moderna Therapeutics, go from perhaps the world’s most celebrated company, hailed for helping ease a once-in-a-century pandemic, to a target of government officials promoting falsehoods about mRNA technology, STAT writes. Those attacks, he warned, would not end with Moderna or mRNA vaccines and are a canary in the coal mine for a larger assault on science and expertise. Afeyan has had a front row seat to the disruptions inflicted by the Trump administration and health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the science world. He still chairs Moderna, the company he co-founded in 2010. The scientific method — where scientists are trained to be constantly skeptical — is being used as an “opening,” he said, for people to come in “with zero background, zero hypothesis, and just make s— up.” Already, he said, people are questioning chemotherapy. They will likely question new breakthrough drugs for other serious diseases.
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STAT Pharma: The science and business of new drug development
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