As­traZeneca has added more de­tails on how it will use its $15 bil­lion bud­get to ex­pand in Chi­na — and the UK phar­ma is bet­ting on cell ther­a­py.

As­traZeneca said Thurs­day it will be build­ing a cell ther­a­py re­search cen­ter and a sep­a­rate fac­to­ry in Shang­hai, where it is head­quar­tered in Chi­na.

The re­search cen­ter will be home to ear­ly-stage re­search, in­clud­ing vi­ral vec­tor and plas­mid de­vel­op­ment, and man­u­fac­tur­ing for clin­i­cal-stage as­sets. The hub, to be named the As­traZeneca Gra­cell Cell Ther­a­py In­no­va­tion Cen­ter, re­flects the phar­ma's pur­chase of the cell ther­a­py biotech Gra­cell Biotech­nolo­gies an­nounced in 2023.

Al­so on Thurs­day, As­traZeneca said it signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing de­signed to sup­port clin­i­cal re­search and start­up com­pa­nies in Chi­na. The MOU will bring tal­ent from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Glas­gow and King's Col­lege Lon­don, to­geth­er with As­traZeneca, the Shang­hai Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Com­mis­sion and HS­BC.

Pfiz­er said a com­bi­na­tion of two of its prostate can­cer drugs — Talzen­na and Xtan­di — suc­ceed­ed in a Phase 3 study and that it plans to ask reg­u­la­tors for ear­li­er use of Talzen­na, a PARP in­hibitor, to treat cer­tain pa­tients.

The study, re­port­ed Thurs­day, in­clud­ed a sub­set of metasta­t­ic prostate can­cer pa­tients: those whose dis­ease can still be treat­ed with hor­mone ther­a­pies and who bear a ho­mol­o­gous re­com­bi­na­tion re­pair gene mu­ta­tion. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly one-quar­ter of metasta­t­ic prostate can­cers bear HRR gene mu­ta­tions, and pa­tients with this form of the dis­ease of­ten face poor­er out­comes.

In the 599-pa­tient TA­LAPRO-3 study, the com­bi­na­tion of Talzen­na and Xtan­di cut the risk of dis­ease pro­gres­sion or death by 37% ver­sus Xtan­di and place­bo. Pfiz­er al­so said that the in­ter­im analy­sis showed “a strong trend to­ward im­proved over­all sur­vival.” Pfiz­er shared few de­tails be­yond these, sav­ing them for a fu­ture med­ical meet­ing.

Col­legium Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal is beef­ing up its port­fo­lio in AD­HD with the ac­qui­si­tion of Cori­um's FDA-ap­proved drug Azs­tarys.

The $650 mil­lion up­front deal car­ries up to an ad­di­tion­al $135 mil­lion in mile­stones and is ex­pect­ed to close next quar­ter, Col­legium said Thurs­day. It marks at least the 12th siz­able bio­phar­ma ac­qui­si­tion so far this year, ac­cord­ing to an End­points News tal­ly.

The all-cash move ex­pands Col­legium's AD­HD port­fo­lio, which in­cludes the drug Jor­nay. It al­so has a mar­ket­ing cam­paign for Jor­nay called "Em­brace your sparkle," with re­al­i­ty TV star and so­cialite Paris Hilton, who fre­quent­ly talks about her own AD­HD di­ag­no­sis.

Azs­tarys has the po­ten­tial to be a long-term source of rev­enue for Col­legium. CEO Vikram Kar­nani said in a press re­lease that it will bring in sales "in­to 2037 and be­yond."

Eli Lil­ly’s so-called triple-G re­duced blood sug­ar lev­els in pa­tients with type 2 di­a­betes by up to 1.9% in a late-stage tri­al — a sim­i­lar mar­gin as Moun­jaro achieved in its piv­otal di­a­betes study.

The triple-G, which is called re­ta­tru­tide, al­so pro­duced 15.3% body weight loss at just over nine months. This com­bi­na­tion of blood sug­ar-low­er­ing and weight loss should make the drug ap­peal­ing, if it reach­es the mar­ket, Lil­ly’s pres­i­dent of car­diometa­bol­ic health Ken­neth Custer told End­points News.

The TRAN­SCEND-T2D-1 study is the first of three Phase 3 tri­als as­sess­ing re­ta­tru­tide in di­a­betes to re­port da­ta. It stud­ied three dose lev­els as an ad­junct to di­et and ex­er­cise in 537 pa­tients who took the shot or a place­bo week­ly. The pa­tients start­ed the tri­al tak­ing a 2 mg shot and in­creased the dose every four weeks un­til they reached one of three tar­get dos­es.