Bristol Myers Squibb Company

In addition to canning an Orum-acquired blood cancer candidate last month, Bristol Myers Squibb cut a Prothena-partnered neuro asset in the third quarter. But with sales climbing 7%, the Big Pharma raised its full-year revenue forecast.

Merck stole the show at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) annual conference, with new data on its Moderna-partnered personalized cancer vaccine leaking prior to the presentation and antibody-drug conjugate sac-TMT making a splash in endometrial cancer; Bristol Myers Squibb revealed the death of a patient with multiple sclerosis in an early-stage trial of zola-cel; and pharma is on track to easily surpass last year’s deal count.

The disclosure—which came ahead of a presentation of data from the Phase 1 Breakfree-2 study at the ACTRIMS-ECTRIMS meeting—follows Bristol Myers Squibb’s late summer revelation that it had paused certain trials of zolacabtagene autoleucel.

Securing financing that allowed an exit from academia, leaving ecology and evolutionary biology for biomedical engineering and shifting from business development to entrepreneurship are among key turning points for three biopharma professionals.

China cracks down on some biotechnology ownership transfers—but will the new policy impact licensing deals?; Disc Medicine’s Phase 3 data sweep redeems rejected rare disease therapy, teeing up another FDA run; and the ESMO conference gets underway in Madrid this week, with much-anticipated data from Merck, and Summit Therapeutics.

Johnson & Johnson beat analyst expectations in the third quarter but left Wall Street wanting more; BMS dominated the news cycle on Monday with a Phase 3 win validating its $4.1 billion RayzeBio buy and mixed data in a late-stage pulmonary fibrosis trial; Revolution Medicines’ newly approved pancreatic cancer drug works better for patients with certain mutations; and Caribou Biosciences may be on its way out.

A low-dose win could derisk a regulatory pathway for BMS’ LPA1 antagonist in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis after a recently reported patient death, but a miss at the higher dose leaves analysts awaiting full data.

The centerpiece of Bristol Myers Squibb’s 2024 RayzeBio buy has read out, hitting the primary endpoint in a late-stage tumor trial.

Big Pharma companies including Bristol Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson and Novartis are among those that made or planned layoffs in Q3. Those cuts could affect over 1,800 employees, with New Jersey the hardest-hit state.