While You Were at ASCO

Hey you'll never guess, but there was an oncology meeting down in Mickey-Mouse land this weekend. No, seriously. Small group of cancer docs, it flies below the radar. Yeah that's probably why you hadn't heard of it. Say it with us: Aaasssssccccoooooohhhhh. No, ASCO.

There have been announcements galore from the annual meeting, and some interesting discussions as well. Mary Jo Laffler reported last night on a compare and contrast of FDA and EMEA, where FDA's oncology chief Richard Pazdur observed “EMEA is not the FDA of Europe, and the FDA is not the EMEA of the United States.” And this morning we wrote that Merck and AstraZeneca are announcing a tie-up in the oncology space, a rather limited but still significant deal to test the industry's most advanced mek and AKT inhibitors together in an early-stage clinical trial. We'll have more on that deal in The Pink Sheet DAILY later this morning.

Did you take the weekend off (god forbid!)? Well then, get ready for an onslaught of oncology development news. While you were winning #250 ...

• Some non-cology news to cleanse the palate: WSJ reported late friday night that Elan was close to selling a minority stake to Bristol-Myers. Reuters follows that up with this update, which includes a rumor of a second suitor (no word if second suitor is positioned on the grassy knoll). [UPDATE: Or, maybe BMS isn't buying, says Bloomberg.]
  
• Herceptin boosts survival in Her-2 positive stomach cancer patients.
  
• That fluorinated version of Nexavar that Onyx isn't happy about? Seems to be working just fine, says Bayer.
  
• Calistoga's PI3k inhibitor advances through Phase I, with flying colors.
  
• Genentech has released full results of its C-08 trial of Avastin in the adjuvant colorectal cancer setting. Full coverage from The Pink Sheet DAILY, here.
• Good data in lung cancer from (separate) studies of Lilly's Alimta and OSI's Tarceva.
• Glioblastoma data on drugs from Merck KGaA and BMS/Exelixis look good.
• There are six hundred more press releases and probably six hundred more on the way. Tell you what, get the rest of the headlines here and check back in with us later today. More to come!

image from flickr user StevenM_61 used under a creative commons license.