The antibody-drug conjugate yields a 48% overall and 24% complete response rate in a pivotal Phase II DLBCL study. The Swiss biotech hopes to compete with Polivy and is studying combo therapy with Imbruvica.

Public Company Edition: After an initial hit to valuations from COVID-19, massive amounts of money have been raised by drug developers, such as argenx with a $862.5m stock sale. However, only two IPOs launched in the US in May, including ADC with a $267m offering.

The cancer drug developer raised $55m. Also, Lyra raised $56m in the last of four biopharma IPOs in April, Biogen sold $3bn worth of debt, Oberland raised a $1.05bn fund and Praxis launched with more than $100m. 

There is strong scientific rationale from US and UK research to support evaluating the selective AXL kinase inhibitor bemcentinib in the UK’s early-stage clinical study program, ACCORD, a new initiative to find potential COVID-19 therapies.