GSK has of­floaded a cor­po­rate ven­ture unit that in­vests in bio­elec­tron­ic star­tups work­ing on neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion, wear­ables, im­plant­ed de­vices and oth­er tech­nol­o­gy, End­points News has learned.

The VC unit, Ac­tion Po­ten­tial Ven­ture Cap­i­tal (APVC), launched with $50 mil­lion from GSK in 2013, when it made its first in­vest­ment in Set­Point Med­ical, cre­ator of an im­plantable de­vice to as­suage in­flam­ma­to­ry dis­eases.

“We can con­firm we have en­tered in­to an agree­ment to spin out cer­tain ven­ture cap­i­tal in­vest­ments his­tor­i­cal­ly held by GSK,” a spokesper­son for GSK said in an emailed state­ment to End­points on Thurs­day.

It's the sec­ond time GSK has sep­a­rat­ed from a cor­po­rate ven­ture cap­i­tal unit. The drug­mak­er al­so spun out its bio­phar­ma-fo­cused ven­ture unit, SR One, in No­vem­ber 2020. SR One has since raised hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars, and GSK still main­tains a stake.

An­oth­er TIG­IT pro­gram has failed in the clin­ic, this time in a Phase 3 study.

Ar­cus and Gilead said on Fri­day that their an­ti-TIG­IT an­ti­body dom­vanal­imab, when com­bined with an ex­per­i­men­tal an­ti-PD-1 and chemother­a­py, did not im­prove sur­vival rates in gas­tric and esophageal can­cers, com­pared to the stan­dard of care.

With the lack of im­prove­ment in over­all sur­vival, Ar­cus and Gilead opt­ed to dis­con­tin­ue the study for fu­til­i­ty. Ar­cus' shares RCUS fell about 7% in trad­ing Fri­day.

The drug was test­ed as a first-line treat­ment for pa­tients who need­ed to have HER2-neg­a­tive ad­vanced dis­ease.

Though the Phase 3 fail­ure is a dis­ap­point­ment, Ar­cus and Gilead got good news on dom­vanal­imab from a Phase 2 study in Oc­to­ber. Pa­tients sur­vived for an av­er­age of 26.7 months in the same pop­u­la­tion and drug com­bi­na­tion — "well be­yond" what’s need­ed to es­tab­lish a clin­i­cal­ly mean­ing­ful ben­e­fit, tri­al in­ves­ti­ga­tors said.

Roche and BioN­Tech stole the show at this year’s San An­to­nio Breast Can­cer Sym­po­sium.

The Swiss drug­mak­er un­veiled Phase 3 da­ta for its oral SERD giredestrant, show­ing the drug slashed the risk of dis­ease re­cur­rence in cer­tain ear­ly-stage breast can­cers. Mean­while, BioN­Tech shared triple-neg­a­tive breast can­cer (TNBC) da­ta for its PD-L1xVEGF-A bis­pe­cif­ic con­tender.

But oth­er drug­mak­ers, such as Cel­cu­ity, Re­lay Ther­a­peu­tics, and Anixa Bio­sciences, al­so had a no­table pres­ence at the con­fab.

Cel­cu­ity’s Phase 3 sub­group analy­sis for mul­ti-tar­get drug: The biotech’s geda­tolis­ib plus stan­dard of care pal­bo­ci­clib and As­traZeneca’s se­lec­tive es­tro­gen re­cep­tor de­grad­er (SERD) Faslodex achieved 12.4 months of pro­gres­sion-free sur­vival in a group of breast can­cer pa­tients whose time to pro­gres­sion on pri­or ther­a­py was over 18 months. The re­sult is nu­mer­i­cal­ly high­er than the 1.9-month PFS seen with Faslodex alone in the same type of pa­tients.