Alex Diatlov

Alex DiatlovOct 26, 2026

AstraZeneca paid $2B for a 12% stake in the company whose drug just beat its own. On Sunday at ESMO, a Chinese-engineered immunotherapy outperformed AstraZeneca’s standard-of-care drug in advanced biliary tract cancer, both given on top of chemotherapy. Median survival was 14.9 months vs 12.1. At 18 months, 44% of patients were alive vs 32.5%. 🤔 AstraZeneca didn’t learn this on Sunday. The drug’s inventor, Akeso, announced the survival win in August. A month later, AstraZeneca invested $2B in Summit Therapeutics, which holds the rights outside China. The rival molecule hits two targets at once: the same immune checkpoint pathway AstraZeneca’s drug blocks, plus VEGF, which feeds a tumour’s blood supply. If that design becomes the new backbone of cancer immunotherapy, AstraZeneca’s other drugs need to sit on top of it. 💊 Why didn’t they acquire the company? Because the evidence isn’t complete yet. The rival drug has only beaten AstraZeneca’s in Chinese patients, and Summit doesn’t even own the China rights. A takeover would mean paying the full price before the drug proves itself in Western trials. A 12% stake costs far less, gets AstraZeneca joint trials with its own cancer drugs, and keeps the option open if global data confirms the win. 👉 Is a 12% stake in your competitor smart hedging, or the first step towards an acquisition?

Alex DiatlovOct 23, 2026

Moderna’s full cancer vaccine results were positive. The stock fell 17% yesterday. The vaccine passed Phase 3 in August, but without numbers. On Thursday, the full results leaked online two days before ESMO. 🧬 Each vaccine is built from the patient’s own tumour. Scientists sequence it, find the mutations unique to that cancer, and encode them in mRNA, so the immune system learns to hunt those exact cells. Added to Merck’s immunotherapy, the vaccine made the cancer 42% less likely to come back than immunotherapy alone. 🤔 Investors expected more. In an earlier, smaller trial, it was 49% less likely to come back. And the vaccine made the cancer 38% less likely to spread to other organs, down from 59% before. 💡 The vaccine works. The open question now is how much, and for whom.

Alex DiatlovOct 21, 2026

Revolution Medicines’ pill nearly doubled pancreatic cancer survival. The stock fell 6.3%. The drug didn’t stop working. Investors just got a closer look at whom it works for. 🧬 The FDA’s review split the trial by tumour mutation. Response rates ranged from 50% in one group to 7% in another, below chemo. 🤔 Yet in the company’s analysis, survival still favoured the pill in every group. So why sell? Because the valuation had already passed $30B on the headline result. The new information was that the mutation changes how well the drug works. 💡 That’s where cancer care is heading. Same disease, different mutation, different response. The drug is the treatment. The molecular test decides who gets it. 👉 In precision oncology, will the next big winners be the drugs, or the tests that pick patients for them?