"I don't think it changes the overall thesis if one uses other space, for example, incretin space. To me it is very clear what big pharma are trying to do to compete against LLY and NVO, whether AZN/MRK license small molecules from China, ABBV/Roche license injectable Amylins from Denmark, or others looking for differentiated assets based on what they have internally. I don't see main reason big pharma not buying/licensing incretin from US SMID because Chinese copycats are cheap. It's ironic so many are talking about Chinese copycats while the most raved US SMID asset in the space is VK2735. Not surprising to me MTSR currently has higher valuation than VKTX - many don't understand why. It isn't an interesting subject to discuss if one can't see from big pharma point of view at all."
I was reminded today I posted this MTSR vs VKTX here - I actually didn’t remember I posted MTSR vs VKTX here I thought I only posted misconceptions of Chinese biotechs on this board earlier this year. Not to gloat of being right it just reminds everyone, me included to have open mind whether assets from China or from anywhere else.

I used ADC as example because it is something I had researched thoroughly thus have very high confidence on the subject matter. I don't think it changes the overall thesis if one uses other space, for example, incretin space. To me it is very clear what big pharma are trying to do to compete against LLY and NVO, whether AZN/MRK license small molecules from China, ABBV/Roche license injectable Amylins from Denmark, or others looking for differentiated assets based on what they have internally. I don't see main reason big pharma not buying/licensing incretin from US SMID because Chinese copycats are cheap. It's ironic so many are talking about Chinese copycats while the most raved US SMID asset in the space is VK2735. Not surprising to me MTSR currently has higher valuation than VKTX - many don't understand why. It isn't an interesting subject to discuss if one can't see from big pharma point of view at all.

Not trying to refer anyone particularly, just referring to a phenomenon. Maybe I should've used PPHM rather than FGEN as example as I initially did thus not hurting anyone's feeling but changed to FGEN because PPHM wouldn't fit my intended description.

A good example of a prior was most people on this board used to believe FGEN was a credible company. No matter what contradictory things the company said that made no sense at all to an objective observer and you told them they didn't make any sense most people wouldn't believe you until the dead end.

If that was the main point I wouldn't have wasted my time to reply. As I have pointed out in my original posts I have looked extensively on oncology assets where there are both Chinese clinical data and western clinical data to get a sense of reliability of clinical data, I haven't found big diversions yet from both early stage assets to later stage assets. Latest clinical data from ELEV:  cORR=23.5% (4/17) in China Jun2023, cORR=22.2% (8/36) in US/EU Mar2025. I form opinions based on actual data not priors. No interest in arguing on subjects no matter what the data are. We'll find out a few years down the road, no question some will succeed and some will fail - many people will interpret the way they want to interpret - something never change!
As of replicating clinical data from China, MRK ran own trials on Kelun TROP2 ADC then pushed it to 10 ph3 trials in past year. Among oncology drugs with ph3 trials from China only and later global trials, for example Beigene, JNJ/LEGN, Takeda, I haven’t found results diverged that much at all - need to separate small bios licensed early stage assets with questionable clinical data from China to begin with.

It’s a simple excuse/blame piece rather than dig deeper trying to find real reasons for underperformance of public SMID biotech. Of course more competition has impact on public biotech but blaming Chinese biotech as main reason is missing the big picture.
Look at ADC space, ever since the flood of clinical data initially from Daiichi and then Chinese TOPO1 ADCs, investors should’ve realized both superiority and higher probability of success of TOPO1 ADCs. Even if we prevent big pharma from licensing ADCs from Chinese biotechs it doesn’t mean big pharma will buy/license ADCs from US public biotech with inferior data. What they would do instead 1) produce TOPO1 ADCs themselves like ABBV, AZN, PFE already done 2) license TOPO1 ADCs from public/private biotech not from China, MRK licensed from Daiichi, LLY acquired private EU biotech Mablink and Emergence etc. What they aren’t going to do is to license/buy US public ADC biotech they don’t believe with reasonable chance to succeed. The only path for US ADC biotech is to reinvent and improve as several public ADC biotech have been doing. STRO is an example typical biotech of realizing it very late its FRa ADC’s competition isn’t approved Elhere anymore rather upcoming ProfoundBio TOPO1 ADC GMAB acquired - would’ve been much better served by not wasting so much time and money on now discontinued ph3 and focusing on its own TOPO1 ADCs ROR1 (outlicensed to Ipsen in 2024 to fund now discontinued ph3 - again proved there’s market for US biotech innovation that's differentiated and not crowded target) and TF1 instead.
One point to prove Chinese biotech competition isn’t the only reason: big pharma haven’t slowed down in acquisition of private US biotech innovations, GSK $1.15B IDRx, LLY $2.5B Scorpion when there are equivalent public biotechs in both cases, NVS $925m + $2.15B Anthos.

Well this is just ban on government devices for the DeepSeek app specifically - it's tough for me to say for this type of ban. If they are to ban the DeepSeek app or open source hosted by US companies for personal devices then I'd say it is. 

If anyone is interested in realistic explanation what DeepSeek really is without reading the actual paper this is a good one from Ben Thompson who lives in Taiwan. Most of reports here have descended into certain narratives and mischaracterization on several fronts including costs etc. If people continue to unable to put aside preconceived notions on innovations in China I think they are going to be surprised a lot, like Robotics, EV, Biotech, AI etc in the future. 

https://stratechery.com/2025/deepseek-faq/

The best thing about DeepSeek-r1 is open source - you can download and run locally or use versions from several US companies hosting it in US without sending anything to China.

FWIW I tested ChatGPT-o3 mini on same subjects last week, results similar except on Chinese biotech. For example top 10 ADC biotech in China, no matter how I frame the question 3-4 different biotechs always showed up but shouldn't for top ADC list - BeiGene and Junshi etc.

Cheaper Innovations:

Here are the number of ADC programs big pharma licensed in recent years and currently active:

MRK - Kelun 6
BNTX - Duality 3, MediLink 1
GSK - Hansoh 2, Duality 1
PFE - Habour BioMed 1, RemeGen 1
Roche - Innovent 1, MediLink 1
AZN - Keymed/Lepu 1
BMY - SystImmune 1
ONC - Duality 1
Merck Serono - Hengrui 1

Smaller Bios - Not complete list:

GMAB - ProfoundBio 5, acquired $1.8B
IDYA - Hengrui 1, Biocytogen 1
Avenzo - Duality 1

I only heard of RemeGen and Habour BioMed before 2022. As one can see pretty much most licensed programs are from top ADC biotech in China.

Top 10 Chinese ADC Biotech in 2025 According to DeepSeek-R1:

Biocytogen, ProfoundBio, Kelun, Hengrui, RemeGen, Innovent, MediLink, Duality, Hansoh, Wuxi XDC

More on Cheaper Innovation:

I tested DeepSeek-R1 over the weekend. Very impressed by the test results. Really like “thought process” feature before giving out answers and insights. Make interactions interesting and fun. It’s open source and can be downloaded to own computer to run locally.

Test on DeepSeek R1: drugs on revenue, investigational drugs on progress

Revenue: accurate plus additional info not asked like vials distributed & market share etc.
Investigational drugs: additional context, both direct and indirect insights, and next steps.

Note: revenue/financial more complete for US/EU bios while there are more gaps in Japanese bios. Switch to Japanese FY improved results but some gaps still exist likely due to fewer inferences as in US/EU bio cases.

Thanks I might. Twitter isn't as useful as in the past, many people with original thoughts don't post there anymore, noise to useful ratio beyond worth awhile now, couldn't even do search for quite sometime because completely overrun by bots and spams.

Biotech Innovation:

This is something biotech investor should pay attention to what big Biopharma are saying and doing because they are on the ground over there in China, have much better picture than investors overall.

I didn’t pay much attention to Chinese biotech except occasionally looking at the very few listed here until 2022 when MRK licensed TROP2 ADC from Kelun while almost everyone knew it was in negotiation to buy SGEN. Looked closer I was very surprised to discover how many different ADC platforms out there and how advanced they were! Sure they aren’t novel targets - don’t need to because of tons of failed ADC targets in the past due to narrow therapeutic windows - but they were able to do complex engineering through combination of linker/payload and monospecific or bispecific antibody to have differentiated profiles. That’s real innovation not copy/paste like so many assumed, and the main reason why so many big biopharma have been looking and licensing there - I don’t think cheap is necessarily the main reason - cheaper and better in many instances that is difficult to pass up. Look at SMMT, MRK license of PD1xVEGF, BMY license of EGFRxHER3 ADC, they paid innovation price upfront not copycat price because these are differentiated assets they couldn’t find similar products in the west at similar stages.

As of replicating clinical data from China, MRK ran own trials on Kelun TROP2 ADC then pushed it to 10 ph3 trials in past year. Among oncology drugs with ph3 trials from China only and later global trials, for example Beigene, JNJ/LEGN, Takeda, I haven’t found results diverged that much at all - need to separate small bios licensed early stage assets with questionable clinical data from China to begin with.

MGNX obviously is not as cheap now as when it was well below $10 and pretty much everyone gave up margetuximab and other candidates in pipelines. I like to buy cheap but currently at $1B valuation it is still reasonably valued especially compared to others.

Margetuximab likely get approved but its value likely depends on future trials in early line of BC/GC when used in combination with either MGD013 or MGA012. ASCO MGD013 combination data encouraging.

MGC018 CRPC early data, 5/7 >50% PSA response, are better than several early stage candidates from other companies, its naked antibody portion produced RECIST response in CRPC before, so unlikely it was a fluke.

The other interesting one is MGD019, PD-1 x CTLA4 bispecific. BMY 1L NSCLC data from nivolumab/low dose ipilimumab combination improved my view on CTLA-4 because it is still the only checkpoint that have improved outcomes in both PD-L1>=1% and PD-L1<1% population when it is used in combination with PD-1 despite BMY screw-up of CheckMate-227 without getting PD-L1<1% on label. A better version of ipilimumab either by itself or by the form f bispecific that can be dosed higher is still very much appealing. It is a very competitive space, will see MGD019 data later this year if it matches company initial statement on early data. To me a safer version of ipilimumab has much higher value than IL-2.

Most of these are in early stage so risk is there, but these targets have sort of either validated or partially confirmed by other drugs, so it is not as risky as others with high valuation.

FDA Posts List Of Antibody Tests Removed From "Notification List"

Antibody tests on this new removal list include those voluntarily withdrawn from the notification list by the test’s commercial manufacturer and those for which there is not a pending Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) request or issued EUA.


https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-provides-promised-transparency-antibody-tests

Currently authorized serology tests included only 13 and 2 of them from ABT. Here are the performances of remaining serology test under currently EUA:


https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/emergency-situations-medical-devices/eua-authorized-serology-test-performance

MGNX I don’t think MGD013 alone was the reason for the run today. You missed 2 other important updates:

MGC018 (B7-H3 ADC) In dose escalation, we have also observed early evidence of clinical activity, especially in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, or mCRPC, with reductions in PSA levels of 50% or more in five of seven patients treated including one with sustained regression of bone disease.

The dose escalation is still ongoing. These were actually at lower doses and on previous calls I had indicated, we were very encouraged by the data we're seeing, even in this lower doses range. So we're actually moved the dose up.

MGD019 (PD-1 x CTLA-4 bispecific) We are currently enrolling patients in additional dose escalation cohorts with no dose limiting toxicities observed. Of the 13 of valuable patients treated at doses of three milligrams per kilogram (3mg/kg) or greater, we have observed four patients across different tumor types with three confirmed and one unconfirmed objective response.


But one of the big goals for the 019 study was to achieve the synergy that one sees for combining an anti-PD-1 with anti-CTLA4 without getting the toxicity that has been previously observed with if you need both combination.

No, your conclusion will not stand the test of time. Death is a lagging indicator everywhere. CDC data by week of Apr 25, covid19 death missed by 50% alone. This tells you other deaths are missed as well because CDC system doesn’t prioritize covid19 death reporting in any way. Another way to look at this,
CDC site starting week of March 28, weekly death surpassed 100% of average of same week from 2016-2019 already even though death reporting lagged significantly.

People are just too impatient to let data be complete to draw conclusion. And they lack understanding of basic data reporting. I am not an expert in CDC data reporting in any way but I am disciplined enough to always read fine print and footnotes before using any data for my own analysis. Most people don’t.

This is from CDC footnote about death reporting and how much lag data contains typically - 8-week for at least 75% complete: “Previous analyses of 2015–2016 provisional data completeness have found that completeness is lower in the first few weeks following the date of death (<25%), and then increases over time such that data are generally at least 75% complete within 8 weeks of when the death occurred”.


https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/

Again I would caution conclusion of that result. They tested 3,330 with 50 positive, resulting 1.5%. This wasn’t random sample testing. To get that 50-80 fold numbers they depended on double adjustments of both sensitivity/specificity and population tested vs population from the county.

Test kit estimate “sensitivity of 80.3% (95 CI 72.1-87.0%) and specificity of 99.5% (95 CI 98.3-99.9%)”, but they gave strong disclaimer and warning about their final conclusion could be substantially off, due to test kit actual sensitivity/specificity and population selection bias I highlighted:

https://twitter.com/jq1234t/status/1251198958195654658?s=21

https://twitter.com/jq1234t/status/1251207334002638858?s=21

Their population adjustment was even more questionable.

I’d caution on trusting those testing results though. MGH didn’t disclose test kit sensitivity/specificity, but said using one from BioMedomics which had very low sensitivity of less than 89% and specificity of less than 91%. It depends on real prevalence, which we don’t really know, that type low sensitivity/specificity implies result can be substantially off.

Article said test from BioMedomics pic.twitter.com/KQ1mQ9FB1Y

— mukund rao (@neemodog) April 18, 2020

ABT serology test - blood based antibody test - for covid-19 is the best I have seen overall so far, 100% sensitivity and 99.5% specificity. This type of sensitivity and specificity is needed for large population with currently estimated prevalence.

ABT PR: https://abbott.mediaroom.com/2020-04-15-Abbott-Launches-Third-COVID-19-Test-a-Laboratory-Based-Antibody-Blood-Test-That-Will-Ship-in-the-U-S-Starting-Tomorrow

Other serology tests:

#COVID19 Reliability for antibody test has become a big concern esp given hands-off regulatory approach

Important new paper out evaluating 9 commercial serology tests against #SARSCoV2. This should help facilitate selection of assays. https://t.co/upiPQxuqD5 pic.twitter.com/8Fvl2QFg7j

— Andy Biotech (@AndyBiotech) April 13, 2020

I agree saliva is perfect for in-home testing kit. I don’t think any other testing kit using swab can be used at home as I previously mentioned on Twitter.


https://twitter.com/jq1234t/status/1246121269017411585?s=21

From Rutgers own PR:

Soon after the Rutgers-ADL team received notification from the FDA on Saturday, the White House’s COVID-19 testing task force called Brooks to offer congratulations and support and to ask about any specific hurdles to expanding testing and enabling other laboratories to benefit from the accomplishment.

Shortly after the White House call, the research team was contacted by chief executive officers of some of the world’s largest life sciences companies that are involved in COVID-19 testing.

“I have spoken with these companies’ leadership to not only share knowledge but to create opportunities for continuing to help innovate during this crisis,” Brooks said. “We will work closely with these new partners, the FDA and the White House task force to leverage everything Rutgers has to offer to not only help our community but also make a global impact.”


https://www.rutgers.edu/news/new-rutgers-saliva-test-coronavirus-gets-fda-approval

I think the reason this hasn’t gotten as much attention as it should is it hasn’t given timeline when this can be scaled up significantly to meet very large volume demand. As of right now, it is only offered regionally at NJ which makes me think it will take some time to scale up, it requires someone else to do it based on my reading.

I think people should just stop trying to interpret data from a few days short period of time and then generalize. This is pretty much true on ALL fronts of COVID-19, data are instantaneous, they aren’t vetted and follow-up are inadequate thus those trying to make quick conclusions have been consistently wrong.

In this particular case large portion of new confirmed cases are asymptomatic at the time of testing doesn’t mean they’ll stay asymptomatic. Look at Diamond Princess, many asymptomatic at the time of tested positive became symptomatic over time due to long incubation period. You need follow-up data from these subjects after testing few countries provide.

>> I don't recall a minute by minute update that a new person got the swine flu back then or was I just to busy to notice?



I don’t know how old you are now, it could be because you were too busy back then during aftermath of financial crisis or you simply don’t remember what it was like back then. Social media wasn’t as advanced back then as today. I still remember news back then constantly showing how kids were dying because younger people were affected by swine flu more than older people opposite of covid-19.

Here is CDC archive on swine flu for the period of Apr 2009 - Apr 2010 written back in 2010 thus not revision of history, showing pretty much similar to what it is happening today, to refresh your memory.


https://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/cdcresponse.htm

Congratulations!

Wasn’t really commenting on RCC ph3 which is much further down the line. High dose IL-2 best indications are melanoma and RCC. If bempeg indeed improved CRs from nivolumab alone in melanoma, should see same effect in RCC - last updated RCC data in RP2D CR=0/26 in 2018 - if not more likely than not the CR effect from melanoma was due to patient selection rather than true bempeg effect.

As of RCC, don’t think one can say nivolumab same as TKI, maybe with sunitinib but not cabozantinib. No 1L relevant comparison, but in 2L RCC when nivolumab and cabozantinib monotherapies vs same comparator everolimus, cabozantinib performed better than nivolumab in OS relatively.

Pretty much. Current chronic HIV treatment isn’t cure. For HBV, cure is defined as lost the hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) and developed surface antibodies while functional cure as clearing both HBV DNA and HBsAg, and experiencing no liver damage for two or three years.

Don’t read these two sentences as directly related. Take the sentence between two “-“ out. That sentence was just my acknowledgment that you understood CMC issue as major negative based on our twitter engagement unlike some others including NKTR who argued it was positive by explaining the good vs bad clinical data. The other sentence referred to previous sentence before “-“ that our different takeaway from JPM call, yours was chaos which I knew already, mine was possibly inadequate dosing which was the first time NKTR acknowledged in public.

A little bit, undetectable got to last for considerable time after treatment, some say 2-3 years to be called functional cure.

I don’t think one needs to listen to them now to know it was chaotic. You leaned positive previously so it might be new to you . I knew that already from their various data presentations, constant shifting explanations, and then top them all with CMC issue revelation - you knew CMC issue as major already - which is why our main takeaways from JPM call are different.

I don’t have much expectation from NKTR really, if they could update RCC data from PIVOT-02 confirming melanoma CR argument - only thing left really at this point - it could provide something positive, if no update one has to assume negative like NSCLC they told you already. I never heard WL in any previous cc before, he seemed better than others. I think it rests with BMY now. It seems BMY has put its act together by taking more active role. Let’s see how this new dose “optimization” go. Also have to watch Roche and THOR data this year, the better their data the more negative for bempeg.

The goal should be cure or functional cure, but whether through short course treatment or long course treatment and how long that would be is far from clear at this point.

GILD is testing its oral PD-L1 inhibitor GS-4224 for both solid tumors and HBV.

>> I would like to see NKTR to increase NKTR-214 dose to produce ORR in melanoma and RCC as monotherapy consistent with high dose IL-2, see how far off the current dose level is.


Major development in the past week, both BMY and NKTR have acknowledged higher dose of NKTR-214 might be needed to improve efficacy, and intend to do more dose escalation and optimization I thought they should’ve done long time ago but wouldn’t do.

Main argument left from NKTR recently has been increase of CRs in melanoma over longer treatment period vs what they had argued on multiple fronts previously. I looked at past PIVOT-02 data presentations again, this increase of CRs over time has been seen only in melanoma as far as I can tell, not shown in UC yet, NSCLC fizzled completely, and surprisingly no update from RCC since ASCO2018! And not surprisingly new dose escalation/optimization/combination come from NSCLC and RCC.

Here is my tracking sheet - table does not come out formatted correctly here unfortunately (ASCO2018 had 2 columns for Melanoma and RCC respectively where * from dose escalation and ** from RP2D, 1 column for NSCLC from dose escalation and 1 for UC from RP2D; no UC from SITC2017; no melanoma at ASCO-GI2019 only UC) - will see how RCC and UC CRs change over longer time when future data are presented:


NKTR CRs from PIVOT-02 Efficacy Evaluable Patient Population Only - Nivolumab + NKTR-214

SITC2017* ASCO2018 SITC2018** ASCO-GI2019** ASCO2019** SITC2019**
Melanoma 2/11 3/11* 3/28** 9/38 13/38 13/38
RCC 1/13 1/14* 0/26**
NSCLC 1/5 2/5*
UC 2/10** 5/29

*from dose escalation
**only at RP2D from dose escalation and expansion

I found a presentation that is public with quite full review of FDA data submission process and FDA data warehouse system, plus tools and softwares for data visualization and report generating etc, including companies who developed those tools.


http://portal.cdisc.org/CDISC%20User%20Networks/Europe/English%20Language/Presentations/2010%2009%2030%20-%20TC%20-%20Traceability%20btw%20SDTM%20and%20AdaM%20;%20CDISC%20Data%20Standards%20Validation/CDISC%20Data%20Standards%20Validation%20-%20How%20can%20it%20be%20done%20-%20ESUG.pdf

I know there are many who disagree, but I think it is wrong. We’ll see soon enough where other big biopharma stand in this debate. I assume inclisiran hit CVOT, but magnitude is uncertain. There is no way I would bet it reaches 25% based on the other 2 PCSK9 CVOTs. Now has to take consideration Vascepa can somewhat impact trial result, don’t think they can really exclude some people who are going to take Vascepa.

Validated and accepted software for all statistical related work for submission purpose is SAS, pretty much used by industry across the board. For standard submission data visualization etc, there are many choices, FDA chose one - not sure if I should say what it is or not - but I don’t know if it is subject to change and how often it is subject to change. One can license from the company who developed it to use it - used to be a small company but acquired by large one - but very expensive even for a not so small company, many try to use alternatives these days.

Currently no question AMRN. As I said on Twitter, if MDCO had CVOT data now similar to AMRN, which is what NVS expect (25% or greater risk reduction) in 2024 or later based on their presentation, then MDCO would have much higher NPV due to longer patent life. Vascepa is a much safer asset like Otezla which is one of several reasons using Otezla as comparison. When NVS/MDCO rumor started, I thought it was very likely true because NVS would be the only natural buyer based on where Vas has been leading NVS too. I’d bet more than 1 bidder for AMRN similar to Otezla, otherwise it would be very unlikely AMGN bid up to $13.4B by itself because BMY/CELG weren’t really in strong negotiation position at the time.

I don’t know that many people argue Vascepa can get to sale level anywhere close to top selling statin of the past. Few did argue with me conceded when we tried to put that vague point to revenue estimates. It seems pointless to argue on that front.

With generally broad label like that, it would be relatively easy to get to $3B or greater level which is more or less analysts’ current estimates especially in a big biopharma’s hand. This isn’t HCV outer years revenue estimate by analysts in the beginning that missed by marathons because they couldn’t see the inevitable price erosion some others had the foresight to see - some still blame ABBV rather than fundamentals. This is pretty simple and straightforward IMO.

Not only staffing but also need to upgrade IT system and build data warehousing infrastructure as FDA did. With technology advances today, even non-statistician but otherwise trained reviewers can use the system that can visualize data and produce report, it can be done remotely.

They haven’t moved that far, possibly EMA relocation slowed down all of their initiatives. EMA hasn’t mandated standard data submission as FDA had done with binding recommendations even though both reference pretty much same submission standards.

CLVS: I offered it as a deal candidate on Oct 16, 2019 based on very low valuation - BMY/CELG deal wasn’t closed at that time now it has - I think the most natural fit would be BMY. Whether BMY would do this deal or not now or ever is a different matter.

https://twitter.com/jq1234t/status/1184516172911390722?s=21

I group rationale from my various tweets into 3 major points:


1. When MRK dealt with Eisai for lenvatinib, Dew commented it was a commercial deal similar to MRK-AZN previous deal on olaparib and selumetinib rather than science deal in counter to BMY-NKTR deal. I disagreed at the time. I thought it was as much science deal as commercial deal because it reflected MRK’s different approach to pembrolizumab combination with chemo or validated target therapies instead of BMY’s higher risk IO/IO combination. To me it has been very clear, up to this point, MRK combination strategies have been proven superior.

https://twitter.com/jq1234t/status/971522847834365953?s=21

Note: Roche utilized similar strategy in combination with chemo and target therapies - recent outstanding result from atezolizumab in combination with old drug Avastin in 1L HCC proved this strategy again.


2. Looking at CLVS right now has to look beyond current rucaparib sale in ovarian cancer alone. PARPi combination with checkpoint inhibitors is beyond ovarian cancer alone, currently including gastric, NSCLC, CRPC, etc.

https://twitter.com/jq1234t/status/1200472124298842114?s=21

Additionally CLVS have lucitanib which is quite similar to lenvatinib. CLVS updated rationale for lucitanib and checkpoint inhibitors combination recently.

https://s22.q4cdn.com/778348918/files/doc_presentations/2019/11/Lucitanib-preclinical-deck-11122019-FINAL.pdf

Consider how big MRK have been betting on pembrolizumab in combination with lenvatinib, it seems BMY are trying to catch up.

https://twitter.com/jq1234t/status/1192865153949339649?s=21


3. MRK vs BMY in IO combinations: the lesson should be you can’t let the other blow open in one major indication like NSCLC. From now on, it is very likely going to be hand to hand combat - as long as one offers similar combinations with similar data in every indication, the other one can’t blow you away like pembrolizumab + chemo did in 1L NSCLC. You can always bet on the side for something entirely different but unproven - MRK did with INCY epocadostat somewhat lukewarmly - I liked everything about INCY for a long time except epacadostat which I had expressed skepticism through the years.

MRK pembrolizumab + axitinib in RCC vs BMY nivolumab + cabozantinib; pembrolizumab + olaparib vs nivolumab + rucaparib; pembrolizumab + lenvatinib vs nivolumab + lucitanib or cabozantinib etc. To me this is going to be the main battles from now on until someone can offer something entirely different approach which is not entirely clear what it will be at this point.