Failed Drug Program News Today

Bristol Myers Squibb and Nektar have read the last rites to their huge, failed cancer collaboration.

(GH01/ iStock) Quench Bio’s short journey has come to an end after the biotech startup found that its target was simply undruggable. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech had focused on blocking the gasdermin D protein with oral inhibitors to treat inflammatory diseases and had attempted to seek out a potent, selective chemical series to progress by the first quarter of 2021. It has not, however, managed to hit that goal, and, with credit to the company, it is not trying to spin...

(GlaxoSmithKline) A drug that Pfizer passed over but saw a revitalized cancer R&D-focused GlaxoSmithKline jump on for $4.2 billion has come up as a dud in a key trial pitting it against U.S. Merck’s blockbuster Keytruda. That drug, originally known as M7824, now bintrafusp alfa, works as a bifunctional fusion protein immunotherapy. It is designed to combine a TGF-β trap with the anti-PD-L1 mechanism in one fusion protein and to combine co-localized blocking of the two immuno-suppre...