In­side the two-week stretch that marked a re­ver­sal in bio­phar­ma sen­ti­ment.

Dur­ing the two weeks that our bio­phar­ma sen­ti­ment sur­vey was in the field in mid-Oc­to­ber, some­thing un­usu­al hap­pened: The mood of the in­dus­try ap­peared to snap out of its de­spair.

End­points Sig­nal sur­veyed more than 1,400 peo­ple for the Bio­phar­ma Sen­ti­ment In­dex (BP­SI) over that time. Com­ing in­to the sto­ry, many were still think­ing about 2025 as an­oth­er grind-it-out down year. At the start of our sur­vey, the sen­ti­ment read­ing hov­ered around 70, far be­low the neu­tral base­line of 100.

But over the next sev­er­al weeks, while the sur­vey was in the field, there was a sharp and con­sis­tent up­turn to­ward a much less neg­a­tive view­point.

A new biotech has raised $100 mil­lion to build a mix of as­sets from in­side and out­side Chi­na, while de­vel­op­ing its own drug can­di­dates.

The Shang­hai-based start­up, called OTR Ther­a­peu­tics, is a new twist on West­ern in­vestors that build new com­pa­nies around Chi­nese drug can­di­dates. The com­pa­ny wants to take ad­van­tage of the rapid de­vel­op­ment and clin­i­cal work avail­able in the re­gion, but with as­sets that can come from any­where.

That ap­proach has at­tract­ed a group of glob­al back­ers, in­clud­ing Pfiz­er Ven­tures, Lil­ly Asia Ven­tures, Temasek, True Light Cap­i­tal and Sirona Cap­i­tal.

OTR has al­ready ac­quired a pre­clin­i­cal neu­rol­o­gy drug can­di­date from an un­named Chi­nese biotech, CEO Zhui Chen said in a Fri­day morn­ing in­ter­view. And it's in late-stage dis­cus­sions about two or three oth­er as­sets to bring in.

The UK’s Na­tion­al In­sti­tute for Health and Care Ex­cel­lence (NICE) told stake­hold­ers this week that pre­vi­ous­ly re­ject­ed drugs won’t au­to­mat­i­cal­ly fall un­der its new cost-ef­fec­tive­ness thresh­old.

Fur­ther, med­i­cines cur­rent­ly un­der re­view that would now be cov­ered by the new £35,000 lim­it will have their de­ci­sions de­layed un­til April, ac­cord­ing to a Thurs­day email seen by End­points News.

Af­ter on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with the US gov­ern­ment, the UK an­nounced last week it was rais­ing its cost-ef­fec­tive­ness thresh­old for drugs by 25%. Cur­rent­ly, the up­per thresh­old lim­it is £30,000, but this will be raised to £35,000, mean­ing an ad­di­tion­al three to five drugs or la­bel ex­pan­sions will be rec­om­mend­ed per year.

It’s cur­rent­ly un­clear which drugs would ben­e­fit from this fu­ture up­date, but meet­ings are ex­pect­ed to be set af­ter April.

Rap­port Ther­a­peu­tics shared new da­ta from a mid-stage tri­al of its seizure drug, say­ing that it demon­strates con­sis­tent ef­fi­ca­cy over time and “across the spec­trum of dis­ease sever­i­ty.”

The re­sults build on topline re­sults re­vealed in Sep­tem­ber that showed its can­di­date, called RAP-219, cut the av­er­age num­ber of long episodes in pa­tients with fo­cal on­set seizures (FOS) by over 70% at eight weeks, as mea­sured by a de­vice im­plant­ed in the brain.

The new da­ta break down those eight weeks, show­ing a 74.7% re­duc­tion in LEs from weeks one to four and al­so from weeks five to eight.

In a more well-es­tab­lished sec­ondary end­point, RAP-219 cut the fre­quen­cy of clin­i­cal seizures by 85% from weeks one to four, and by 77.2% from weeks five to eight.