Silence Therapeutics' stock fell 36% despite presenting positive data on its experimental drug, zerlasiran, due to investor concerns over potential liver toxicity and competition from Eli Lilly's orally administered Lp(a)-lowering drug. Meanwhile, pharma executives at the Jefferies London Healthcare Conference appeared unconcerned about President-elect Trump's appointment of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as health secretary. Schrödinger CEO Ramy Farid criticized the reliance on AI for drug discovery, calling it "nonsense," and emphasized the importance of physics in building training sets for machine learning.
Key takeaways:
- Pfizer has promoted its Chief Oncology Officer Chris Boshoff to the position of Chief Scientific Officer, replacing Mikael Dolsten who served in the role for 15 years.
- Sage Therapeutics is discontinuing the development of SAGE-718, the only remaining drug in its clinical research pipeline, due to negative results from a study on cognitive impairment in patients with Huntington’s disease.
- Silence Therapeutics' stock fell 36% despite presenting positive data on its experimental drug, zerlasiran, due to investor concerns over potential liver toxicity and competition from Eli Lilly's orally administered Lp(a)-lowering drug.
- Schrödinger CEO Ramy Farid has criticized the reliance on AI for drug discovery, calling it 'nonsense', and advocates for a physics-based molecular modeling approach.