Drug Discovery & Development

1 week ago | drugdiscoverytrends.com | Brian Buntz

Applied Cognition, a clinical-stage platform therapeutic company, and academic partners have published the first continuous, non-invasive measurements of the human glymphatic system in Nature Biomedical Engineering. The glymphatic system is a brain-wide waste-clearance network that removes toxic proteins including amyloid-β and tau during sleep. Dysfunction of the system is implicated in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions.

1 week ago | drugdiscoverytrends.com | Brian Buntz

The FDA is betting big on genAI to transform tedious workflows, setting a June 30 deadline for agency-wide deployment. While details of its plans are scarce at present, using genAI to reduce FDA’s paperwork burden seems inevitable. The broader goal doesn’t qualify as “a high-order AI problem today,” said Vik Bajaj, managing director at Foresite Capital. Bajaj envisions a low-risk, relatively easy scenario where genAI could find widespread use in “the bulk of paperwork” agency-wide.

2 weeks ago | drugdiscoverytrends.com | Brian Buntz

Sanofi has officially opened its new $130 million flagship corporate offices in Morristown, New Jersey. The move consolidates nearly 2,000 employees in a 260,000-square-foot facility designed to accelerate the company’s commercial operations and strategic decision-making in its largest market. The facility replaces Sanofi’s older Bridgewater operations about 19 miles away.

2 weeks ago | drugdiscoverytrends.com | Brian Buntz

The FDA on May 22 cleared GSK’s interleukin-5 antibody Nucala (mepolizumab) as an add-on to inhaled triple therapy for adults whose chronic obstructive pulmonary disease keeps flaring despite treatment and whose blood-eosinophil count starts at 150 cells/µL. The approval is on the basis of the MATINEE and METREX phase 3 trials. The MATINEE study, which included 804 patients, found that Nucala reduced these exacerbations by 21% annually (rate ratio 0.79; 95% CI 0.66–0.94; P = 0.01).

2 weeks ago | drugdiscoverytrends.com | Brian Buntz

Pharma executives, observing peers in retail and banking tout GenAI payoffs “in weeks and months,” increasingly ask why their own firms can’t match that pace. This pressure for a ROI for an industry that has seen . So, when pharma executives ask Sheetal Chawla, Capgemini’s head of life sciences: “When will I be able to show the ROI of these [genAI] investments?” Chawla recommended reframing the question. That is, embrace new metrics and new ways of thinking.