The American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago this past weekend featured plenary sessions highlighting advances from Revolution Medicines and Summit Therapeutics’ Chinese partner Akeso. Analysts expect that Revolution Medicines could see a potential approval for pancreatic cancer as early as this year. Summit faces challenges in demonstrating that the survival benefit observed in Akeso’s clinical trial in China will translate to a global population.
Other companies including Immuneering, Bristol Myers Squibb/BioNTech, Merck, Pfizer, and Moderna also reported progress at the meeting. Moderna presented five-year survival data for its Merck-partnered mRNA-based personalized melanoma vaccine, described as “encouraging.” The company also announced $50 million in funding from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations to test its experimental Ebola vaccine amid an ongoing outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.
Outside of ASCO developments, Pfizer entered into an agreement with China’s Innovent Biologics aimed at strengthening its oncology pipeline. This deal is similar to a recent partnership between Bristol Myers Squibb and Hengrui Pharma and may indicate increased collaboration between Western pharmaceutical companies and their Chinese counterparts.
Eli Lilly continued expanding partnerships related to GLP-1 therapies. The company signed a deal valued at over $3 billion with Haisco Pharmaceutical Group to work on several early-stage assets across undisclosed indications. Lilly also partnered with South Korea’s Hanmi Pharmaceutical on a GLP-2 agonist currently being tested for short bowel syndrome.
BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics plans another bid for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of its experimental ALS therapy NurOwn after adding former regulator Peter Pitts to its board. Meanwhile, attention turns toward the upcoming 2026 American Diabetes Association meeting beginning this weekend in New Orleans, where Eli Lilly will discuss new data on retatrutide—its next-generation obesity asset—and Novo Nordisk will present results on CagriSema following mixed outcomes against Lilly’s Zepbound earlier this year.
Editor’s note (June 3): This story has been updated to note that Moderna’s mRNA-based personalized cancer vaccine is being developed in partnership with Merck.
