On Sunday, a small biotech company called Summit Therapeutics won a remarkable victory, saying its experimental drug outperformed Merck’s Keytruda, the world’s best-selling drug, in non-small cell lung cancer, the disease that represents Keytruda’s biggest market.

By itself, Summit’s victory would be a dramatic story, although not an unheard of one in the unpredictable world of biotechnology. But it’s just the start. Because at the center of it is one of the industry’s most iconoclastic figures: Robert “Bob” Duggan, who became a billionaire after he bought up shares of another biotech company, Pharmacyclics, that was on the brink of failure, developed a breakthrough cancer drug, and sold the company to AbbVie for $21 billion.

Duggan, 80, is a living rebuke to a pharmaceutical industry self-image that is increasingly crafted in Cambridge, Mass. and San Francisco. Before Pharmacyclics, he had no drug industry experience, having worked in cookie stores and then surgical robots. He lacks a college degree, and is a practicing scientologist who told STAT in an interview that he reads the works of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard every day and who has in the past said he’d given the church more than $360 million. He speaks in long, dramatic arcs, often spelling out words, referencing their roots, or giving itemized lists.

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Guyana continues to take numerous steps to convince the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that the now six-year-old ban on catfish exports should be lifted, officials said Wednesday. Chief Fisheries Officer of the Ministry of Agriculture, Denzil Roberts said Guyana’s relevant fisheries regulations and inspection manuals have been updated. US Ambassador to Guyana, Nicole ...

View the full post Ram’s donates over 40,000 bottles of water to Rotary Club of Grenada on NOW Grenada.

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Good morning and happy Friday. We discuss a new innovative immunotherapy, and we take a look at some of the earnings highlights yesterday.

FDA approves immunotherapy for soft-tissue cancer

The Food and Drug Administration has approved a T cell immunotherapy from Adaptimmune Therapeutics for a rare cancer that arises in the body’s soft tissues, extending the power of immunotherapies to difficult-to-reach sarcomas.

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Good morning! Before we get to biotech, check out STAT’s deep dive into how UnitedHealth mobilizes a massive network of physicians and milked the health care system for profit.

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Good morning. It’s been a challenging time for workers in the biopharma industry. We’ve seen companies announce layoffs one after another, and people online talk about how it seems increasingly difficult to secure a new job. Read our latest on this subject below, with new numbers on the state of the job market.

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Hello! Hope your weekend was a blissful one. Today, we talk about AbbVie’s outsize marketing spend, see how GLP-1s are impacting cancer rates, and more.

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View the full post Canada provides CAN$80,000 to GrenCHAP and GRENCODA on NOW Grenada.

View the full post Invitation to Tender: G-CREWS Component 3.6 — Disaster Resilience in Medical Centres on NOW Grenada.

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Good morning. Read on today for some exclusive hiring news and a retraction of a high-profile paper on cancer detection.

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