FDA Approves Lilly’s Donanemab While Rejections Highlight Manufacturing Issues

The biggest news of the week was the FDA approval of Eli Lilly’s Kisunla (donanemab) on Tuesday. While not unexpected, it was one of the year’s most highly anticipated decisions. And last week saw another big approval from the FDA—that of Verona’s novel COPD drug. But the regulator has also dropped three Complete Response Letters on drugmakers in the last seven days. Two of these were directly related to issues with third-party manufacturers. Though it’s unclear if those contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs) were overseas, the FDA has flagged several concerns regarding manufacturers in India and China that have contributed to extreme drug shortages in the U.S. This will be particularly important in the face of a potential decoupling from Chinese CDMOs should the BIOSECURE Act become law, as India has been one country eyeing the opportunity. Meanwhile, Korean company Samsung Bio struck a $1 billion manufacturing contract with an undisclosed U.S. biopharma company. Among the many products the manufacturer makes are the piping hot antibody-drug conjugates, or ADCs. The global market has already exceeded $10 billion and is estimated to grow to nearly $30 billion by 2028. As evidence of the excitement surrounding ADCs are five major deals struck by biopharma companies this year. It’s not all good news for the ADC space, though, as one of those three FDA rejections was handed to Merck and partner Daiichi Sankyo’s investigational ADC for the treatment of certain non-small cell lung cancers. Meanwhile, BMS backed out of a collaboration with Eisai to develop an ADC being investigated in ovarian, peritoneal and fallopian tube cancers, as well as non-small cell lung cancer. We will continue to watch the industry’s strategies unfold as biopharma firms compete for a piece of that exploding ADC market.