Today, a brief rundown of news involving Bausch + Lomb and Merck & Co., as well as updates from Amgen, AstraZeneca and Asahi Kasei that you may have missed.
Bausch + Lomb board chair Thomas Appio has been named the company's interim CEO "effective immediately," replacing current leader Brent Saunders. Appio has held several leadership roles at Bausch + Lomb since 2010 and, in August, was tapped to chair the company's board. His "deep knowledge of the business, global leadership understanding and longstanding connection" to the company "position him well to build on the company’s momentum and lead its next phase of growth," according to a statement. The board and Saunders, who'd led and sold multiple drug companies before stepping in as Bausch CEO in 2023, "mutually agreed" on his exit. The announcement Monday was “unexpected,” but "we remain confident in the fundamental trajectory of the business," wrote Leerink Partners analyst Daniel Clark. The company hiked its 2026 earnings outlook, too, which is the “latest proofpoint that operating momentum is growing,” Clark added.
Detailed study data presented by Merck & Co. this weekend shed additional light on the safety of its experimental eye drug remigromig. Merck said last month that remigromig had succeeded in a late-stage trial in diabetic macular edema, while also revealing, without specifics, that treatment was associated with higher rates of certain side effects. On Saturday, Merck disclosed that adverse events related to proliferative diabetic retinopathy — an eye complication associated with diabetes — occurred in 6.7% and 6.1% of remigromig recipients, depending on the dose, versus 0.9% of patients who got the comparator drug Lucentis. Those cases were "generally manageable" and may reflect "natural disease progression," Merck said. Still, the drug wasn’t superior to Lucentis on any secondary study measure and around 5% of recipients discontinued treatment, versus 1% of those in the comparator group. “We are unsure where exactly this could fit in the current treatment branded paradigm,” wrote RBC Capital Markets analyst Trung Huynh.
Amgen and AstraZeneca also provided new Phase 3 data, revealing over the weekend summary results supporting the benefits of their drug Tezspire in the autoimmune condition eosinophilic esophagitis. The companies found that nearly 70% of patients on the highest dose were in remission at 24 weeks, versus 3.5% of placebo recipients. Though cross-trial comparisons can be misleading, that figure is higher than what was observed in testing of Sanofi and Regeneron's Dupixent, the only other biologic therapy approved for the disease. The "best-in-disease results" should yield "another blockbuster indication" for Tezspire, wrote William Blair analyst Matt Phipps. More detailed findings will be presented at a medical meeting on Wednesday.
The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved Asahi Kasei's Hovilpri to treat certain lesions caused by herpes simplex virus infections. Asahi acquired Hovilpri by purchasing the drug's developer, Aicuris, in a $920 million deal earlier this year. The medication has been cleared for use in people with weakened immune systems and whose infections don't respond to treatment with multiple other antivirals. It's the first new herpes simplex virus therapy with a "novel" drug mechanism in nearly three decades, the company said in a statement.
