Good morning, Pharmalittle family! Your loyal scribe Ed Silverman is taking today off, so he bestowed upon me, Adam Feuerstein, the great honor of delivering today’s roundup of pharma news. But first, my coffee: Intelligentsia House Blend, brewed in a Chemex. Old school. Hints of apple, citrus, and milk chocolate. Or, so they say. To me, it just tastes like a really good cup of joe on a stormy Friday morning. The Pharmalot campus will be closed next week, so Ed will be back Jan. 3. Happy holidays from all of us.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new treatment for patients with follicular lymphoma, a slow-growing type of blood cancer, said Genentech, its maker and a subsidiary of Roche. The new drug, called Lunsumio, is a so-called bispecific antibody, which works by attaching to cancer cells with one arm of the drug, and T cells with a second arm. In a clinical trial, 60% of patients with follicular lymphoma treated with Lunsumio achieved a complete response. The most common side effect was an overactive immune response called cytokine release syndrome, reported by 39% of patients.
Tech mogul Sean Parker is expanding his immunotherapy research empire, the Parker Institute of Cancer Immunotherapy, adding two more centers to its roster, STAT reports. PICI has already funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into six research centers around the country — bringing top researchers like CAR-T pioneer Carl June and Nobel winner Jim Allison into the fold. Now, it’s adding centers at San Francisco’s Gladstone Institutes and Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
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