Roche’s Genen­tech got a leg up in the packed an­ti-TIG­IT race ear­li­er this year when the FDA grant­ed it the first break­through des­ig­na­tion in the field based on some up­beat mid-stage da­ta in non-small cell lung can­cer. Now, look­ing to keep its lead, the phar­ma gi­ant is of­fer­ing a two-and-a-half-year look at the same pa­tient group — but will two deaths crush its chances?

A com­bi­na­tion of Genen­tech’s an­ti-TIG­IT can­cer tiragolum­ab plus PD-L1 in­hibitor Tecen­triq re­duced pa­tients’ risk of dis­ease pro­gres­sion or death by 38% com­pared to those who re­ceived Tecen­triq alone at a me­di­an fol­low-up of 2.5 years, the com­pa­ny said on Fri­day. In a pre-spec­i­fied ex­plorato­ry analy­sis of par­tic­i­pants with high lev­els of PD-L1, the com­bo re­duced the risk of dis­ease wors­en­ing or death by 71% com­pared to the Tecen­triq group.

The com­bo al­so showed a “clin­i­cal­ly mean­ing­ful” im­prove­ment in over­all re­sponse, with a rate of 69% in the com­bo group and 24.1% in the Tecen­triq group for PD-L1-high pa­tients. On the sec­ond end­point, over­all sur­vival, pa­tients in the broad­er pop­u­la­tion sur­vived a me­di­an of 23.2 months on the com­bo, com­pared to 14.5 months on just Tecen­triq, ac­cord­ing to Genen­tech. Me­di­an OS hasn’t yet been reached in the PD-L1-high sub­group that re­ceived the com­bo.

How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny al­so re­port­ed two treat­ment-re­lat­ed deaths in the com­bi­na­tion group. While no ex­pla­na­tion was sup­plied, Mizuho’s Mara Gold­stein thinks tiragolum­ab still stands a chance.

“While Gr.5 events are not to be tak­en light­ly, in the con­text of the ef­fi­ca­cy ob­served, it may not be a weighty is­sue,” she wrote in a note to in­vestors on Fri­day.

Mod­er­na says that it's on its way to hav­ing an mR­NA vac­cine against not one, but two dif­fer­ent sea­son­al virus­es.

The biotech re­leased the first ear­ly da­ta from its flu pro­gram Fri­day morn­ing, an­nounc­ing that all dos­es of the shot sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost­ed an­ti­bod­ies in younger and old­er adults with­out "sig­nif­i­cant safe­ty find­ings."

A 500-per­son Phase II will con­firm dose lev­els and com­pare it to an ap­proved flu vac­cine, the com­pa­ny said, and prepa­ra­tions for a large piv­otal tri­al are un­der­way. Mod­er­na said it is al­so ad­vanc­ing new de­signs that can have po­ten­tial­ly broad­er cov­er­age of dif­fer­ent flu strains than cur­rent shots.

The re­sults are the open­ing sal­vo in a four-head­ed (so far) race to de­vel­op the first mR­NA flu vac­cine, as Mod­er­na tries to edge out BioN­Tech, Sanofi sub­sidiary Trans­late Bio, and Cure­Vac past the gate. Al­though all four have pro­grams un­der­way, Mod­er­na is the first to an­nounce da­ta.

Those da­ta, though, don't give a clear an­swer on whether mR­NA can im­prove on pre­vi­ous tech­nolo­gies. Mod­er­na said the 50 mi­cro­gram dose of the shot, de­signed like most flu vac­cines to in­oc­u­late against four dif­fer­ent strains of the virus, in­creased an­ti­bod­ies against the two In­fluen­za A strains by eight-fold and ten-fold, re­spec­tive­ly, and against the two in­fluen­za strains by three-fold and two-fold.

There was lit­tle dif­fer­ence in an­ti­bod­ies be­tween dose lev­els, the com­pa­ny said. Safe­ty da­ta echoed those from the Covid-19 vac­cine, with fa­tigue, myal­gia (mus­cle ache), and headache the most com­mon side ef­fects.

Eli Lil­ly will li­cense in Re­gor Ther­a­peu­tics ther­a­pies for meta­bol­ic dis­or­ders, as a part of an agree­ment an­nounced Fri­day that will give the Chi­nese biotech an up­front pay­ment of up to $50 mil­lion, part of which is an eq­ui­ty in­vest­ment.

In a vague­ly word­ed re­lease, Lil­ly said it has a li­cense for cer­tain Re­gor "in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty" and will have an op­tion to ex­tend that li­cense. In ex­change, Lil­ly will over­see glob­al clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion for any ther­a­pies, with the ex­cep­tion of Chi­na, Macau, Hong Kong and Tai­wan. Re­gor, a Shang­hai-based com­pa­ny, will re­serve the rights to these re­gions.

The com­pa­ny is el­i­gi­ble for up to $1.5 bil­lion in po­ten­tial pay­ments based on pre­clin­i­cal, clin­i­cal and com­mer­cial mile­stones, as well as tiered roy­al­ties from sales.

Re­gor CEO Xi­ayang Qiu said that the col­lab­o­ra­tion is, in part, a recog­ni­tion of Re­gor’s core tech­nol­o­gy, the Com­put­er Ac­cel­er­at­ed Ra­tio­nal Dis­cov­ery plat­form. CARD, an­oth­er in a long line of fan­ci­ly named biotech com­pu­ta­tion­al plat­forms, is de­signed to cre­ate a more ef­fi­cient process for the dis­cov­ery of new drugs.

Through CARD, the team has ad­vanced a num­ber of prod­ucts in its pipeline in just two years, in­clud­ing RGT-587 for on­col­o­gy, which is set to en­ter Phase I tri­als, and and RGT-075 to tar­get a glucagon-like pep­tide 1 re­cep­tor hor­mone, which stim­u­lates glu­cose-in­duced in­sulin se­cre­tion. That can­di­date is en­ter­ing Phase II/III tri­als.

The com­pa­ny was found­ed in 2018 by a team that in­cludes two Pfiz­er vet­er­ans and three — Qiu and Min Zhong, and CTO Wenge Zhong — who used to work for Am­gen’s Chi­nese R&D op­er­a­tions. Re­gor’s fo­cus so far has been on on­col­o­gy, meta­bol­ic dis­eases and au­toim­mune dis­eases.

Bris­tol My­ers Squibb brought in more than $9 bil­lion in sales from its an­ti­co­ag­u­lant Eliquis in 2020, and it con­tin­ues to see growth with more than $8 bil­lion in sales in the first nine months of 2021 (and an­oth­er near­ly $4.5 bil­lion for Pfiz­er in 2021).

But in 2022, one of the largest PBMs in the US, CVS Care­mark, has re­cent­ly de­cid­ed to no longer cov­er the megablock­buster, and in­stead will on­ly of­fer cov­er­age for war­farin and Janssen's Xarel­to.

That de­ci­sion will like­ly put a dent in Eliquis sales next year for both BMS and Pfiz­er.

But BMS said the de­ci­sion should be lim­it­ed, telling End­points News in an emailed state­ment that while the Bris­tol My­ers Squibb-Pfiz­er al­liance "is dis­ap­point­ed" by this move to hin­der pa­tient ac­cess to Eliquis, the drug will con­tin­ue to have "pre­ferred sta­tus for 85% of CVS Health lives in 2022 and on­ly those pa­tients who have com­mer­cial health in­sur­ance plans with phar­ma­cy ben­e­fits man­aged by Zinc, specif­i­cal­ly, are sub­ject to their for­mu­la­ries and this de­ci­sion, ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2022. Im­por­tant­ly, 95% of Eliquis pa­tients na­tion­al­ly will not be ef­fect­ed by this for­mu­la­ry de­ci­sion by CVS/Zinc." (Bold and ital­ics are theirs.)

For some doc­tors, the de­ci­sion forces them to scram­ble and switch pa­tients to a new an­ti­co­ag­u­lant, and they don't have time to fig­ure out if their pa­tients fall in­to the gap dis­cussed by BMS and Pfiz­er.

Back in Jan­u­ary 2019, the late House Over­sight Com­mit­tee chair Eli­jah Cum­mings kicked off a near­ly 3-year-long drug pric­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion that cul­mi­nat­ed to­day in a ma­jor new re­port de­tail­ing how prices for vi­tal drugs have risen sub­stan­tial­ly since their launch, while call­ing on the Sen­ate to pass a bill that will al­low Medicare to ne­go­ti­ate some prices.

The com­mit­tee's in­ves­ti­ga­tion fo­cused on 12 of the most ex­pen­sive drugs for Medicare, show­ing mas­sive price spikes that have ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over the years and made some drugs, like in­sulin, en­tire­ly un­af­ford­able for some, to the point where some di­a­bet­ics have had to ra­tion their life-sav­ing in­sulin, and some have died.

Doc­u­ments ob­tained by the com­mit­tee show that sev­er­al of the com­pa­nies tar­get­ed Medicare specif­i­cal­ly to boost rev­enues.

An in­ter­nal No­vo Nordisk slide deck from Oc­to­ber 2013 em­pha­sized, “Part D is the most prof­itable mar­ket for the No­vo Nordisk in­sulin port­fo­lio,” and not­ed that in­sulin vol­ume for the Part D mar­ket was grow­ing three times faster than the com­mer­cial mar­ket. A 2016 pre­sen­ta­tion pre­pared for No­var­tis by an out­side con­sul­tant em­pha­sized, “Medicare is crit­i­cal to brand suc­cess, CMS spent ~$1 bil­lion on Gleevec in 2014.”

Build­ing off the work of three hear­ings with phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ex­ec­u­tives from sev­en com­pa­nies, as well as oth­er pre­vi­ous re­ports, this fi­nal re­port in­cludes new find­ings from an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Pfiz­er’s mar­ket­ing of its block­buster pain drug Lyri­ca, and a deep­er dive in­to the in­sulin prod­ucts from Eli Lil­ly, No­vo Nordisk, and Sanofi, which col­lec­tive­ly con­trol about 90% of the glob­al in­sulin mar­ket.

Days af­ter re­port­ing pos­i­tive Phase III re­sults for in­tranasal mi­graine med za­veg­epant, Bio­haven chair­man and CEO Vlad Coric is talk­ing about mar­ket­ing plans. It’s a month or more be­fore Bio­haven will file for FDA ap­proval and like­ly a year be­fore launch, but Coric is al­ready think­ing about mes­sag­ing and com­mer­cial­iza­tion.

His plan? A dual strat­e­gy to at­tract po­ten­tial pa­tients around speed to re­lief – za­veg­epant study re­sults show the spray can pro­vide re­lief in as fast as 15 min­utes and a re­turn to nor­mal in 30 min­utes – along with a sec­ondary an­ti-nau­sea ben­e­fit in us­ing an in­tranasal ver­sus a pill.

“It’s go­ing to be com­ple­men­tary to Nurtec and many peo­ple are go­ing to want this around be­cause you don’t con­trol when a mi­graine hits,” Coric said. “Now you can con­trol which of these tools you can take to­day to com­bat your mi­graine.”

He’s al­ready scout­ing for a new celebri­ty spokesper­son to add an­oth­er well-known voice to its group of ad­ver­tis­ing am­bas­sadors for Nurtec ODT that in­cludes re­al­i­ty TV star Khloe Kar­dashi­an and ac­tor and talk show host Whoopi Gold­berg.

That’s all of course con­di­tion­al on FDA ap­proval. The pos­i­tive Phase III da­ta Bio­haven de­tailed ear­li­er this week showed za­veg­epant was su­pe­ri­or to place­bo on the co-pri­ma­ry end­points of pain free­dom and free­dom from most both­er­some symp­toms at two hours, and su­pe­ri­or to place­bo in de­liv­er­ing pain re­lief as ear­ly as 15 min­utes.

While the ul­ti­mate fate of No­var­tis’ big gener­ics arm San­doz may still be up in the air, there’s no doubt it’s in play as a po­ten­tial buy­out tar­get.

Overnight, Reuters picked up on a re­port out of Ger­many that EQT and the bil­lion­aire Strüng­mann broth­ers — en­joy­ing a huge wind­fall from the overnight suc­cess of BioN­Tech’s mR­NA Covid vac­cine — are kick­ing the tires at San­doz. And No­var­tis CEO Vas Narasimhan con­firmed it.

"There have been var­i­ous re­quests for more in­for­ma­tion,” Narasimhan told WirtschaftsWoche. “But no con­crete of­fers.”

This is the sec­ond re­port out of Ger­many on the dis­cus­sions over San­doz. Han­dels­blatt re­port­ed more than a week ago that EQT and the Strüng­manns — Thomas and An­dreas — were in talks over a $21 bil­lion bid. And it would­n't be their first gener­ics deal, as the bil­lion­aires sold Hexal to No­var­tis in 2005.

Narasimhan's de­ci­sion to con­firm their in­ter­est — rather than just re­main mum — leaves lit­tle doubt in just how much he would like an auc­tion to get go­ing. He just lined up a $21 bil­lion fund for new deals with his sale of the Roche stake. A San­doz sale would make him a for­mi­da­ble po­ten­tial buy­er in 2022.

Narasimhan got every­one’s at­ten­tion at the end of Oc­to­ber when he flagged a plan to un­der­take a strate­gic re­view of San­doz to see whether the gener­ics group should stay in­side No­var­tis, or be sold or spun off in­to an in­de­pen­dent com­pa­ny.

A new health­care SPAC is ex­pect­ed to price dur­ing Fri­day’s ses­sion, and it’s one that wants to take ad­van­tage of the in­dus­try’s buzzi­est sec­tor.

The blank check com­pa­ny will make a $200 mil­lion de­but on Nas­daq, com­ing to the pub­lic mar­ket on the backs of Stan­ley Cap­i­tal fundrais­ing. This SPAC is not on­ly tar­get­ing life sci­ences, but life sci­ences com­pa­nies with a spe­cif­ic fo­cus on ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence. One need not look past the name as ev­i­dence — Health­care AI Ac­qui­si­tion Corp.

Ac­cord­ing to the S-1 fil­ing, the SPAC is aim­ing to tar­get com­pa­nies “with high AI readi­ness and tech­no­log­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion po­ten­tial.” The pri­ma­ry fo­cus will be in the US and Eu­rope in op­er­a­tions “where the ad­di­tion­al in­te­gra­tion of an AI or au­toma­tion so­lu­tion can cre­ate in­cre­men­tal trans­for­ma­tion­al val­ue.”

Led by Stan­ley Cap­i­tal’s found­ing part­ners Si­mon Cot­tle and Patrick Hargutt, the SPAC team be­lieves such val­ue can be found in any of three sec­tors in health­care. The first two deal less with drug R&D but re­main tan­gen­tial: with­in the S-1, the team lays out how AI will blos­som in clin­i­cal tri­al soft­ware and health­care IT.

But the com­pa­ny lays out most of its de­tails re­gard­ing the third area — out­sourced phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ser­vices, such as CROs and CMOs. The S-1 lays out how such out­sourc­ing has trend­ed up in the last sev­er­al years, cit­ing a BCC Re­search es­ti­mate say­ing this ser­vices mar­ket will grow to $266 bil­lion by 2025.

Two years ago, life sci­ences VC No­valis Life­Sciences an­nounced that it had raised $85 mil­lion for its first fund, look­ing to in­vest in­to any­where be­tween 8 to 12 com­pa­nies "in var­i­ous seg­ments of the life sci­ence in­dus­try." No­valis now wants to go big­ger, an­nounc­ing ear­li­er this week it raked in $300 mil­lion for No­valis Life­Sciences In­vest­ments II.

The New Hamp­shire-based VC, found­ed in 2017 by Gink­go Bioworks board chair­man and ex-Bay­er CEO Mar­i­jn Dekkers, plans to in­vest in­to any­where be­tween 10 and 15 more life sci­ence com­pa­nies.

So far, No­valis has not list­ed from where — or who — it's got­ten its fund­ing, but in to­tal, the firm man­ages ap­prox­i­mate­ly $500 mil­lion in the two in­vest­ment funds.

Over the past few years, No­valis has in­vest­ed and backed quite a few com­pa­nies un­der the biotech um­brel­la, from ther­a­peu­tics to food pro­duc­tion. On the ther­a­peu­tics side, some of those biotechs in­clude:

• Gink­go, where Dekkers is chair­man of the board, and the biotech was the sub­ject of a short sell at­tack last month — amidst it re­veal­ing it­self as a tar­get of a DOJ probe;
• De­ci­pher Bio­sciences, an on­col­o­gy di­ag­nos­tics com­pa­ny that em­pha­sizes can­cer ge­nomics and was bought out by Ve­r­a­cyte ear­li­er this year;
• Cerev­el Ther­a­peu­tics, a Cam­bridge, MA biotech fo­cus­ing on CNS drug can­di­dates that went pub­lic via SPAC in Oc­to­ber 2020.

In ad­di­tion, sev­er­al oth­er peo­ple had re­cent­ly joined No­valis: trust op­er­a­tions vet­er­an Con­stan­tine Pan­telis as COO, and ex-Ther­mo Fish­er sci­en­tist and for­mer head of DNA syn­the­sis at Gink­go, Devin Leake, as man­ag­ing di­rec­tor. Paul Meis­ter, who as then-vice chair­man of Fish­er Sci­en­tif­ic and worked with Dekkers close­ly on the Ther­mo Fish­er merg­er back in 2006, has got­ten on board and joined the VC firm as part­ner.

An­gion’s lead or­gan dam­age drug took two strikes ear­li­er this year, flop­ping as a re­pur­posed ef­fort for Covid-19 and whiff­ing in high-risk kid­ney trans­plant pa­tients. The biotech re­port­ed a third on Thurs­day, rais­ing se­ri­ous ques­tions about the pro­gram’s fu­ture.

In a Phase II study look­ing at some car­diac surgery pa­tients at risk of kid­ney in­jury, An­gion re­port­ed its ANG-3777 can­di­date missed bad­ly on the pri­ma­ry end­point. The re­sults come about a month and a half af­ter the kid­ney trans­plant study and less than five months af­ter the Covid-19 tri­al, os­ten­si­bly leav­ing the can­di­date on the chop­ping block.

ANGN shares were down about 18% af­ter the bell Thurs­day evening and in­to ear­ly Fri­day morn­ing.

Dur­ing a Thurs­day af­ter­noon in­vestor call, CEO Jay Venkate­san im­plied this could be end of the road for ANG-3777, say­ing An­gion’s “pri­ma­ry fo­cus” mov­ing for­ward will be its Phase II ty­ro­sine ki­nase re­cep­tor in­hibitor, ANG-3070. But An­gion and its part­ner Vi­for Phar­ma will need to fur­ther re­view the da­ta, he said, not­ing a de­ci­sion will like­ly be made some­time in ear­ly 2022 about next steps.

Much of An­gion’s fo­cus post-re­veal dealt with a sec­ondary end­point that al­so missed sta­tis­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance, but one which the com­pa­ny said is more com­mon­ly used as a reg­u­la­to­ry bench­mark. In dam­age con­trol mode on the in­vestor call, Venkate­san stressed this point and not­ed An­gion still wants to take a clos­er look at the da­ta.

“We have been clear with in­vestors that this tri­al was not in­tend­ed to gen­er­ate sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant re­sults, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the MAKE90 end­point, where we be­lieve we were not suf­fi­cient­ly pow­ered,” Venkate­san said.

Mar­garet Koziel has bounced back and forth be­tween acad­e­mia and biotech through­out her ca­reer — and af­ter 25 years, she has land­ed her first po­si­tion as part of a biotech's top brass.

Koziel joined Ax­cel­la Ther­a­peu­tics — found­ed by Flag­ship’s Noubar Afeyan, Ge­of­frey von Maltzahn and David Berry as Ax­cel­la Health — in 2019, and as of Mon­day, she is now in the C-suite as the biotech’s new CMO.

As a self-de­scribed ap­plied sci­en­tist, Koziel’s ca­reer has been star-stud­ded: af­ter grad­u­at­ing from Dart­mouth and its med­ical school, she went to Har­vard Med­ical School, where she taught as an as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine for 12 years. And af­ter Har­vard, Koziel first crossed over in­to biotech and took a job with No­var­tis as their head of trans­la­tion­al med­i­cine in in­fec­tious dis­ease.

Af­ter jump­ing from No­var­tis to Ver­tex, she re­turned to acad­e­mia — but this time at UMass, wear­ing a va­ri­ety of hats for the five years she was there: every­thing from pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine to di­rec­tor of clin­i­cal re­search and up to as­sis­tant vice provost in clin­i­cal re­search.

And then, she crossed right back in­to the realm of biotech with a job at Kalei­do Bio­sciences, which then led her to Ax­cel­la two and a half years ago, where she climbed the lad­der from glob­al pro­gram team lead to VP of clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and ul­ti­mate­ly to CMO.

For Koziel, she joined the com­pa­ny be­cause of its mod­el us­ing “en­doge­nous meta­bol­ic mod­u­la­tors” — mol­e­cules that could po­ten­tial­ly re­store health across a net­work of dis­reg­u­lat­ed path­ways.

Vi­a­tris (My­lan/Pfiz­er's Up­john) and In­di­a's Bio­con Bi­o­log­ics are re­port­ed­ly pon­der­ing whether to fur­ther en­twine their biosim­i­lar busi­ness­es in­to a $10 bil­lion stand­alone com­pa­ny, ac­cord­ing to sources from Nisha Pod­dar at an In­di­an af­fil­i­ate of CN­BC.

Ear­li­er this sum­mer, the two com­pa­nies won the first high­ly-cov­et­ed in­ter­change­abil­i­ty des­ig­na­tion for their biosim­i­lar Sem­glee, which is an in­sulin that's in­ter­change­able with Sanofi's Lan­tus. Al­though, in a bizarre twist with the way the US in­sulin mar­ket works, the com­pa­nies had to launch two ver­sions of the in­ter­change­able — one at a 65% dis­count, and one at a much high­er price in or­der to gain mar­ket share.

https://twit­ter.com/CN­BCTV18News/sta­tus/1468792319625203713

A Vi­a­tris spokesper­son told End­points News via email, "We don’t com­ment on mar­ket ru­mors and spec­u­la­tion."

Such a deal would bring clos­er to­geth­er two com­pa­nies that are al­ready de­vel­op­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing and com­mer­cial­iz­ing a port­fo­lio of biosim­i­lars and in­sulin analogs, in­clud­ing biosim­i­lars to Hu­mi­ra, Her­ceptin, Neu­las­ta, and En­brel.

Vi­a­tris, which saw its com­plex gener­ics and biosim­i­lars busi­ness bring in about $1 bil­lion in net sales in the first nine months of 2021, has ex­clu­sive com­mer­cial­iza­tion rights for the biosim­i­lars in the US, Cana­da, Aus­tralia, New Zealand, the EU and Eu­ro­pean Free Trade As­so­ci­a­tion coun­tries. Bio­con Bi­o­log­ics has ex­clu­sive com­mer­cial­iza­tion rights for Japan and cer­tain emerg­ing mar­kets. And they have co-ex­clu­sive com­mer­cial­iza­tion rights in the rest of the world.

With re­ports of Omi­cron cas­es in over 50 coun­tries, and at least 19 US states, some re­gions like the UK are now ex­pect­ing a rapid rise of Omi­cron as com­mu­ni­ty spread takes off.

While the UK has on­ly seen about 800 Omi­cron cas­es so far, the gov­ern­ment’s Health Se­cu­ri­ty Agency warned that if the re­cent growth rate con­tin­ues, “we ex­pect to see at least 50 per­cent of Covid-19 cas­es to be caused by the Omi­cron vari­ant in the next two to four weeks,” ac­cord­ing to the New York Times.

John Ed­munds, an epi­demi­ol­o­gist at the Lon­don School of Hy­giene & Trop­i­cal Med­i­cine, said that plan B mea­sures an­nounced by PM Boris John­son were “ab­solute­ly not an over­re­ac­tion” even if Omi­cron turned out to be milder than the cur­rent dom­i­nant vari­ant, ac­cord­ing to The Guardian.

Ed­munds told a Roy­al So­ci­ety of Med­i­cine we­bi­nar Thurs­day that it was “ex­treme­ly like­ly” there's more Omi­cron in com­mu­ni­ties, adding, "With the speed of spread of this virus, we may well have re­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of cas­es by Christ­mas."

Mean­while, CDC di­rec­tor Rochelle Walen­sky said Wednes­day that her staff is "avail­able 24/7, as they have been through­out this en­tire pan­dem­ic, to pro­vide in-per­son and re­mote tech­ni­cal sup­port for the pub­lic health re­sponse to the Omi­cron vari­ant, in­clud­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions of the epi­demi­o­log­ic and clin­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of Omi­cron or oth­er SARS-CoV-2 in­fec­tions."

Peo­ple with cer­tain chron­ic con­di­tions are far­ing worse than oth­ers dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. A new sur­vey from The Har­ris Poll com­mis­sioned by Glax­o­SmithK­line finds that peo­ple with asth­ma, specif­i­cal­ly se­vere eosinophilic asth­ma, are among them.

More than two-thirds (68%) of pa­tients di­ag­nosed with se­vere eosinophilic asth­ma sur­veyed de­scribe their health as fair or poor – and that may be down­play­ing the re­al­i­ty. Nine­ty per­cent of physi­cians who see se­vere asth­ma pa­tients sur­veyed rate their pa­tients’ over­all qual­i­ty of life us­ing the same fair or poor de­scrip­tors.

"We know that pa­tients will of­ten ac­cept where they are and just feel this is how it is with se­vere asth­ma," Tom Cor­bridge, se­nior med­ical lead at GSK in the US, said. "When they come in­to the of­fice and are asked how they're do­ing, they may say 'OK.' But that type of un­der­re­port­ing may set the doc­tor up for po­ten­tial­ly un­der-rec­og­niz­ing where they tru­ly are."

Mean­while, the on­go­ing Covid-19 pan­dem­ic has been both bless­ing and curse for asth­mat­ics. Few­er pa­tients are hav­ing flare-ups thanks to less ex­po­sure to trig­gers like res­pi­ra­to­ry in­fec­tions and poor air qual­i­ty aid­ed by mask­ing and stay­ing home more of­ten. How­ev­er, it’s al­so like­ly that few­er pa­tients have been di­ag­nosed be­cause of skipped or de­layed doc­tors' vis­its and less test­ing, Cor­bridge said.

The Har­ris Poll re­sults show that while GSK has made some progress in se­vere asth­ma, it needs to dou­ble down on ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness ef­forts with both pa­tient ad­vo­ca­cy groups and physi­cians, he said.