Posts Tagged: "Bristol-Myers"

On January 20th, NYC-based drugmaker Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (NYSE:BMY) and Kenilworth, NJ-based pharmaceutical firm Merck & Co. (NYSE:MRK) announced that the two companies had entered into a settlement and licensing agreement resolving worldwide patent litigation over a cancer treatment. As per the announced terms of the settlement, Merck will make a one-time payment of $625 million to Bristol-Myers Squibb and will also pay future royalties through 2026 on sales of Merck’s Keytruda.

Bristol-Myers Squibb was able to move on in clinical trials of its cancer drug Opvido more quickly than anticipated after kidney cancer patients who were administered the medication showed superior overall survival compared to those patients who were not on an Opvido regimen. Opvido, which has already been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of advanced melanomas and lung cancers, is an inhibitor of the protein known as programmed cell death protein 1, or PD-1. PD-1 inhibits the response of T cell lymphocytes, making it more difficult for an immune system to target a tumor.

There’s been a lot of positive activity in recent months for Bristol-Myers Squibb of New York City. In early March, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the use of BMS’s immunotherapy drug Opvido for the treatment of lung cancer. The approval came ahead of schedule after a clinical trial of the drug was ended due to a significant improval in survival rates. In the early days of April, the company announced a partnership with Dutch-based pharmaceutical developer uniQure that will see BMS pay uniQure $254 million for the successful development of a genetic therapy for congestive heart failure. Also in early April, BMS finalized the acquisition of Flexus Biosciences, a California firm focused on developing anti-cancer therapeutics.

There are certainly some signs for hope. One of them came recently from Princeton University, where graduate students worked on a project which identified a treatment for blocking an enzyme which is important for metastasis, or the spread of cancer through a patient’s body. Many methods of treating cancers can be incredibly damaging to a patient’s body. Today there are many cancer treatments that are developed with an eye towards minimizing the difficult side effects caused by a regimen of chemotherapy or radiation.