March 9 Quick Takes: Pfizer and Sobi’s factor VIII therapy meets Phase III endpoints

Efanesoctocog alfa from Sanofi (Euronext:SAN; NASDAQ:SNY) and Swedish Orphan Biovitrum AB (SSE:SOBI) met the primary endpoint in the Phase III XTEND-1 study, bringing the companies one step closer to the market with a longer acting therapeutic for hemophilia A. In the 52-week, 159-patient study, once-weekly efanesoctocog alfa lead to a median annualized bleeding rate of 0 and a mean ABR of 0.71. It also met the secondary endpoint, showing that once-weekly dosing was superior to prior prophylactic factor VIII replacement therapy with a reduction in ABT based on intra-patient comparison. Efanesoctocog alfa is a recombinant factor VIII therapy with Fc engineering that extends circulation by adding a region of von Willebrand factor and XTEN polypeptides – a technology from Amunix Pharmaceuticals Inc., which Sanofi acquired last year.

Adaptive Biotechnologies Corp. (NASDAQ:ADPT) announced plans to restructure and the addition of J.P. Morgan veteran Tycho Peterson as CFO. Adaptive is cutting its workforce by about 12% as it reorganizes into two new business areas. The first, minimal residual disease (MRD), will be led by Nitin Sood and comprises its clonoSEQ diagnostic test. The second, immune medicine, will be led by Sharon Benzeno and comprises its research, diagnostic and drug discovery products and services related to its T cell mapping work in partnership with Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT). ...