Cardiovascular

Avoro Capital, Holocene Advisors and Darwin Global say that Acceleron should sell later for a higher price based on forthcoming data or Merck should raise its bid above $180 per share.

From the latest COVID-19 advances to the emergence of a game changer for heart failure, Scrip’s editor in chief Eleanor Malone reviews the big stories of the past three months. Safety issues around JAK inhibitors and AAV vector-based gene therapy were also to the fore, while biopharma financing continued apace.

The company announced the biggest biopharma M&A deal of the year so far, but Merck will need more large deals to manage declining sales when its top-selling product faces biosimilars in 2028. 

The company, which has treatments in the clinic for CLN2 Batten disease and APOE4-associated Alzheimer’s disease, is developing AAV-mediated gene therapies designed for safer outcomes.

In this week's podcast edition of Five Must-Know Things: new US warnings for JAK inhibitors; strong new heart failure results for Jardiance; good head-to-head results for Pfizer in atopic dermatitis; US payers and drug exclusion lists; and a look ahead at key expected hematology launches.

Boehringer Ingelheim’s cardiometabolism head Mohamed Eid considers the impact of EMPEROR-Preserved study on the heart failure treatment landscape and looks ahead at potential new conquests in kidney disease for its SGLT2 inhibitor.

A price has finally been agreed for Novartis's small interfering RNA therapy and over the next three years, NHS England now expects to treat about 300,000 patients at high risk of a second cardiovascular event with inclisiran.

The full dataset from the closely-watched study demonstrated that Jardiance showed a 21% reduction in the risk of cardiovascular death or hospitalization for HFpEF compared with placebo, a significantly greater benefit than seen with the only approved drug for the indication, Novartis's Entresto.

The German firm intends to use the proceeds from an over-subscribed round to move its micro-RNA-132 inhibitor forward into trials for heart failure and advance its pipeline.

Jean-Paul Clozel, whose firm Actelion was bought by Johnson & Johnson for $30bn, is back with his new company and a new approach to help save the lives of heart attack patients.

Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly have gained a US approval for their SGLT2 inhibitor empagliflozin in heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, which could be extended further in coming months to other types of heart failure, adding to the products competing in this previously neglected therapeutic area.

Just approved In US for chronic kidney disease in patients with type 2 diabetes, Kerendia is going to be an important new treatment option, according to Bayer pharma head Stefan Oelrich, who was speaking as the Leverkusen-headquartered group unveiled a decent set of sales figures for the second quarter.