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Hello from ASH! Writing this Readout from a press room at the annual hematology confab here in San Diego. Today’s edition is chockfull of Vertex content, plus some extras from ASH and elsewhere.

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Good morning, everyone. Damian here with another multibillion-dollar deal, a word on the future of Sanofi, and a setback in one of medicine’s longest-running quests.

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The deal marks the second billion-dollar acquisition by AbbVie in under a week. Facing the prospect of declining sales from two of its best-selling drugs, the company also acquired Immunogen and its ovarian cancer treatment for $10 billion last Thursday.

With the buyout, AbbVie will acquire several clinical-stage molecules for Parkinson’s, schizophrenia, and epilepsy, among other disorders, many of which previously belonged to one of the company’s biggest rivals.

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We cover all that and more this week on “The Readout LOUD,” STAT’s biotech podcast. We discuss why AbbVie is spending $10 billion on a cancer-focused company that spent four decades on the path to its first FDA approval, a deal with implications for biotech in 2023 and for a burgeoning area in oncology. We’ll also talk about the latest news in the life sciences, including safety concerns for CAR-T cancer treatment, the slumping industry job market, and some curious explanations for clinical failures.

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Hello, everyone. Damian here with a rebound for biotech stocks, the potential of Wegovy, and a major change at the FDA.

The need-to-know this morning

• Abbvie said it would acquire ImmunoGen, a maker of cancer drugs, for $10.1 billion. ImmunoGen is being acquired for $31.26 per share, or a 95% premium to its Wednesday closing price. The company markets an antibody-drug conjugate called Elahere used to treat ovarian cancer.

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Under the agreement, AbbVie will pay $31.26 per share in cash for Immunogen, a nearly 100% premium to the company’s recent trading price. Central to the deal, expected to close in the middle of next year, is Elahere, an Immunogen product that won Food and Drug Administration approval for advanced ovarian cancer in 2022.

Elahere is among a surging class of cancer medicines called antibody-drug conjugates, or ADCs, which are designed to deliver a targeted dose of chemotherapy directly to tumor cells while sparing healthy tissues. AbbVie’s acquisition is the latest multibillion-dollar deal in the space, following Merck’s $22 billion agreement with ADC specialist Daiichi Sankyo and Pfizer’s $43 billion buyout of Seagen earlier this year.

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People who almost certainly had Alzheimer’s were also included in the study, but in this group, a placebo outperformed Cassava’s drug.

The conclusion, of course, is obvious: Simufilam is inactive. It’s an inert compound no more effective than a placebo. Cassava’s assertion that simufilam is showing “disease-modifying activity” falls apart given its study was opened to people who should have been ineligible because they were misdiagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Whether that was done intentionally or unwittingly isn’t known, but it’s certainly troubling and makes the case for immediate, regulatory intervention even stronger.

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Hi! Today we see that prime editing works nicely in monkeys, learn more about the potential new bill to speed treatments for life-threatening diseases, and find that a Regeneron (formerly Decibel) therapy may restore hearing in children.

The need-to-know this morning
• Sanofi said it will spin out its consumer health unit and cut costs in other areas in order to increase spending on research and development of new medicines. Separately, the French pharma giant reported third-quarter earnings and revenue that fell short of analyst consensus. Sanofi reiterated its financial forecast for the remainder of the year, but new, long-range guidance for 2024 and 2025 implies financial results lower than current analyst estimates.
• Abbvie reported adjusted third-quarter earnings of $2.95 per share, beating the consensus estimate. Revenue was $13.93 billion, down 6% year over year but better than consensus. Sales of the arthritis medicine Humira fell 36% from the previous year to $3.5 billion, largely due to generic competition, but were still in line with consensus. The company raised financial guidance for the remainder of the year.
• The FDA approved a new treatment for ulcerative colitis made by Eli Lilly. As Jonathan Wosen reports, the drug, called Omvoh, is the first to target an immune signaling pathway that plays a key role in sustaining the chronic, gastrointestinal disease.

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GSK’s recent launch of a new RSV vaccine for adults is emblematic of this move, adding to a portfolio that includes other vaccines, such as the very successful Shingrix for shingles, as well as drugs for HIV, other infectious diseases, and cancer, among others. But what does the growing sentiment against vaccination, not just in the United States but around the world, mean for such a bet on this market?

“It’s a very, very serious issue,” Walmsley said, noting that in 11 U.S. states, basic vaccination rates are now lower than they were before Covid. “The answer can’t be sort of flinging science over the airwaves and saying ‘trust us,’ because people don’t. There is a really serious challenge of misinformation and the ongoing issue of politicization, which I suspect is going to get more challenging in the next year for obvious reasons.”

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Extending patent protection doesn’t just stretch a drug’s profits — in some cases, doing so can lead to its most significant revenue period, according to a recent analysis published by the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge, or I-MAK, a nonprofit advocating for drug pricing reforms.

The organization looked at four blockbuster drugs — Humira, Avastin, Rituxan, and Lantus — that had biosimilars launched between 2019 and 2023. On average, each of the drugs in the analysis earned three times the revenue during the patent extension period as they did during the original patent protection period, which gave them an average 13.2 years of unchallenged market presence.

Overall, the drugs made 56% of their overall revenue in the years after the end of the initial patent. In the first 20 years, they made $126 billion of the total $284 billion they earned up until competitors entered the market.

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