Re­searchers re­port­ed that adding Ake­so and Sum­mit Ther­a­peu­tics’ ivonescimab to chemother­a­py cut the risk of death by 26% in a study con­duct­ed in Chi­na for a cer­tain form of lung can­cer.

The study, known as HAR­MONi-A, ex­am­ined the close­ly-watched drug in lung can­cer pa­tients with an EGFR mu­ta­tion. It in­clud­ed pa­tients who pre­vi­ous­ly re­ceived a tar­get­ed ther­a­py that blocks EGFR, which is the go-to treat­ment for this form of lung can­cer. Pa­tients en­rolled in the study re­ceived ei­ther ivonescimab, which is a PD-1xVEGF bis­pe­cif­ic, or place­bo on top of chemother­a­py.

It’s the first study to show a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant sur­vival ben­e­fit us­ing im­munother­a­py for this pa­tient pop­u­la­tion, ac­cord­ing to Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas MD An­der­son Can­cer Cen­ter on­col­o­gist Xi­un­ing Le, who pre­sent­ed the da­ta on Fri­day at the So­ci­ety for Im­munother­a­py of Can­cer an­nu­al meet­ing in Na­tion­al Har­bor, MD. Le was not in­volved in the Chi­na study, but is the prin­ci­pal in­ves­ti­ga­tor for the cor­re­spond­ing glob­al study called HAR­MONi.

AT­LANTA — At one of the main an­nu­al gath­er­ings of re­searchers and drug de­vel­op­ers in the obe­si­ty field, No­vo Nordisk and Eli Lil­ly were the talk of the town.

But it was­n't just be­cause of their ap­proved GLP-1 in­jecta­bles, which were the fo­cus of a pric­ing deal at the White House on Thurs­day.

Rather, No­vo was a fre­quent top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion be­cause of its bid­ding war with Pfiz­er over the ac­qui­si­tion of obe­si­ty biotech Met­sera. The We­govy mak­er and Met­ser­a's pri­vate meet­ing rooms were about 100 feet apart at the con­fer­ence.

Novo's In­di­anapo­lis ri­val, mean­while, gar­nered a spot­light on Thurs­day morn­ing for a first look at its Phase 2 amylin ana­log da­ta. The elo­ral­in­tide da­ta marked one of the on­ly ma­jor tri­al read­outs at this year's Obe­si­ty­Week con­fab.

Eli Lil­ly is shak­ing up its neu­ro­science and im­munol­o­gy lead­er­ship, while giv­ing two long­time ex­ec­u­tives ad­di­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

The In­di­ana-based com­pa­ny said Thurs­day it has hired Ca­r­ole Ho to be the pres­i­dent of its neu­ro­science di­vi­sion and pro­mot­ed Adri­enne Brown to pres­i­dent of im­munol­o­gy. Ho was most re­cent­ly the chief med­ical of­fi­cer at De­nali Ther­a­peu­tics, which has long worked on a suite of ther­a­pies for neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases.

Ho's ap­point­ment comes af­ter a hand­ful of small re­cent deals Lil­ly has made in the neu­ro­science space. In April, Lil­ly paid $18 mil­lion to li­cense a gene ther­a­py cap­sid from Sang­amo that can po­ten­tial­ly pen­e­trate the blood-brain bar­ri­er. And in May, Lil­ly ac­quired the non-opi­oid pain biotech SiteOne Ther­a­peu­tics for up to $1 bil­lion.