Today, a brief rundown of news involving Curium and Sionna Therapeutics, as well as updates from Novo Nordisk, Corbus Pharmaceuticals, Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals and Contineum Therapeutics that you may have missed.
The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved a first-of-its-kind generic drug from Curium. The clearance was awarded to Bexlutry, a copycat version of Novartis’ Lutathera. Like Lutathera, Bexlutry delivers radioactive lutetium to a protein, “SSTR,” found on the surface of certain neuroendocrine tumors. It’s now the first generic “radioligand therapy,” or targeted radiopharmaceutical for cancer. The approval covers use in treating SSTR-positive neuroendocrine cancers, which include foregut, midgut and hindgut tumors. It was issued after Curium prevailed in a patent dispute with Novartis. — Ben Fidler
Sionna Therapeutics will lay off nearly half its workforce and alter its clinical development strategy following disappointing results in a key cystic fibrosis drug trial. On Monday, the company said an after-the-fact analysis unearthed multiple confounding factors in its failed trial. The company intends to incorporate the lessons learned into a new Phase 2 study testing a different regimen. Sionna’s explanation “seems reasonable, but it’s still very hard to have conviction,” wrote Stifel analyst Paul Matteis. The coming job cuts and other cost-saving moves will extend Sionna’s financial runway into the second half of 2029 while it pursues its new strategy. — Ben Fidler
Novo Nordisk will drop the “Nordisk” in its name as part of a corporate rebranding, the company said Monday. Going forward, “Novo” will be used as the company’s “day-to-day” name while “Novo Nordisk” will remain its legal name, according to a Monday statement. The rebrand comes ahead of a “capital markets” day next week, during which Novo intends to provide investors with an overview of its “updated corporate strategy.” The company has lost more than two-thirds of its market value since mid-2024 and ceded its leadership position in obesity treatment to rival Eli Lilly. — Ben Fidler
An experimental Corbus Pharmaceuticals drug helped people with obesity lose as much as 5 percentage points more than a placebo after 12 weeks in an early-stage trial. Corbus’ drug, CRB-913, targets a kind of cannabinoid receptor that regulates appetite, an approach that so far has yielded disappointing clinical results. To Jefferies analyst Amin Makarem, the early efficacy results reported Monday were “competitive” and suggest “differentiated” tolerability compared to GLP-1 drugs. Still, anywhere from 1.5% to nearly 10% of patients, depending on the dose, stopped treatment because of psychiatric side effects. Those types of side effects are a concern with cannabinoid drugs and “the key debate” surrounding CRB-913, Makarem wrote in a client note. Corbus plans to start a Phase 2 study next year. — Ben Fidler
A dual-acting RNA interference therapy from Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals effectively silenced two genes implicated in cardiovascular disease in an early-stage trial, the company said Tuesday. According to Arrowhead, a single dose of that therapy, Aro-Dimer-Pa, reduced levels of the proteins PCSK9 and APOC3 circulating in the blood by 72% and 88%, respectively. Arrowhead is positioning the medicine as a treatment for “mixed hyperlipidemia,” a common condition characterized by high levels of bad cholesterol and fats in the blood. Mixed hyperlipidemia is a “very large” market opportunity and Arrowhead now appears to have a “highly differentiated drug,” wrote Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Prakhar Agrawal. — Delilah Alvarado
Contineum Therapeutics said Monday an investigational drug it’s been working on with Johnson & Johnson failed a Phase 2 trial in major depressive disorder. Compared to a placebo over the course of five days, the drug didn’t meaningfully improve scores on a widely used depression rating scale, Contineum said. Though the outcome was “disappointing,” investors had “low expectations” for the study, wrote RBC Capital Markets analyst Brian Abrahams, noting that the company’s “main value driver” is a fibrosis drug that’s also in clinical testing. J&J will evaluate the depression data to inform the next steps for the program. — Delilah Alvarado
