Pharmaceutical Executive Daily: Pathos AI Enters Collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb

Welcome to Pharmaceutical Executive Daily, your quick briefing on the top news shaping the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry.

In today’s Pharmaceutical Executive Daily, Bristol Myers Squibb discloses a patient death in its Phase I Breakfree-2 trial of CAR-T therapy zola-cel for multiple sclerosis, Pathos AI launches multi-year collaborations with Bristol Myers Squibb and Tempus AI to build an AI-driven dataset for Alzheimer’s disease, and health economist Dr. Nadine Zawadzki speaks with The Ron Lanton Report on how value is defined and measured across healthcare.

Bristol Myers Squibb disclosed a patient death in its Phase I Breakfree-2 trial of zolacabtagene autoleucel, an investigational CD19-directed CAR T cell therapy for multiple sclerosis, with the patient dying of septic pneumonia 44 days after infusion. The company says the death was unrelated to its earlier voluntary pause on zola-cel studies and that no additional Grade 5 events have occurred across the 190 patients treated in its Phase I autoimmune programs.

Pathos AI announced multi-year strategic collaborations with Bristol Myers Squibb and Tempus AI to build a curated dataset and agentic AI capabilities for Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological conditions. BMS is also leading Pathos’ $237 million Series E round, which values the company at approximately $3 billion post-money, while gaining three-year exclusive rights to apply Pathos’ Foundry platform across its neuroscience portfolio.

Finally, pharmaceutical and health economist Dr. Nadine Zawadzki speaks with Ron Lanton on how value is defined differently by patients, clinicians, and payers across the healthcare system. She argues value-based care remains poorly executed despite a sound concept, and points to creative risk-sharing models, like CMMI’s outcomes-based sickle cell gene therapy model, as a path toward solving the upfront-cost dilemma facing curative therapies.

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