Bristol-Myers Squibb Names New R&D Chief
09 March 2017 - 4:04AM
Dow Jones News
By Jonathan D. Rockoff
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. said it would replace its
research-and-development chief, naming a Massachusetts General
Hospital executive to the key job as the company seeks to move past
a major drug-development setback.
Thomas Lynch Jr., a Bristol board member and cancer doctor who
has been overseeing Massachusetts General's physicians, will take
the helm of the company's laboratories on March 16. He will leave
the board and replace Francis Cuss, who Bristol said is
retiring.
Last year, Bristol said that its immunotherapy Opdivo failed to
perform significantly better than chemotherapy in a trial testing
untreated lung-cancer patients, a big market that the company had
been dominating.
Bristol pioneered the introduction of immunotherapy drugs, which
fight cancer using the body's own immune system. But the unexpected
study results gave rivals an opening to catch up, and wiped away
tens of billions of dollars in the company's market value.
Bristol CEO Giovanni Caforio said in an interview that the
management change was "really about the future," not past
performance.
Dr. Lynch's experience in cancer-drug research, academic
medicine and managing doctors will help Bristol as it seeks to get
ahead of scientific advances and cost pressures that are remaking
how drugs are discovered, reimbursed and prescribed by physicians,
Dr. Caforio said.
"It's about the capabilities we need, the skills we need in
order to deliver on the extraordinary value of" Bristol's pipeline
of promising drugs, Dr. Caforio said.
Dr. Lynch steps into the R&D job at an important juncture
for Bristol as the company seeks to retain its hold on the market
for immunotherapy drugs as well as find new drug franchises that
furnish new sales and broaden the company's revenue base.
Bristol is racing rivals to bring to market the next generation
of cancer treatments, which will pair immunotherapies with each
other or with other agents. The company hopes the combinations can
help it overcome the failure to prove the benefit of treating lung
patients with Opdivo alone.
In the next year, Bristol will also learn whether late-stage
trials support Opdivo's use in kidney, liver and other cancers, and
it will have to decide which of its drugs in the earlier stages of
development, including new kinds of immunotherapies, to invest in
studying further.
Dr. Lynch said in an interview that he aims to deepen Bristol's
efforts to target drugs to the right patients by using molecular
clues known as biomarkers that can help indicate whether a patient
is likely to benefit.
Analysts say the Opdivo lung-cancer trial failed because it
included too broad a selection of lung-cancer patients, rather than
those whose tumors produce high levels of a protein known as PD-L1.
After testing only those patients, Merck & Co. won approval for
its drug Keytruda in untreated lung patients last October.
Developing drugs that are more likely to work in specific
patients might also help pharmaceutical companies demonstrate the
value of their medicines and overcome efforts by increasingly
cost-conscious health plans to limit reimbursements, Dr. Caforio
said
"What is required now in R&D is different than what was
required a long time ago," Dr. Lynch said.
Dr. Lynch, 56, has a background in profiling patients likely to
respond to treatment. While a Massachusetts General physician
treating lung-cancer patients, in the 2000s, he helped show that
those with a mutation to the EGFR gene were likely to benefit from
certain drugs.
Dr. Cuss, 62, will serve as an adviser to the company for three
months. Dr. Cuss said in a statement provided by Bristol that "it
has been an honor" to captain the company's R&D and he was
confident it "will continue to flourish" under Dr. Lynch's
leadership.
Last month, Bristol said it appointed three new people to the
company's board of directors and would repurchase $2 billion in
stock, after the company talked with activist hedge fund Jana
Partners LLC, which had taken a stake in the company in the fourth
quarter of 2016. Investor Carl Icahn also took a stake, The Wall
Street Journal reported.
Write to Jonathan D. Rockoff at Jonathan.Rockoff@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 08, 2017 11:49 ET (16:49 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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