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Replimune is axing 144 employees at its Woburn headquarters and 80 at its Framingham manufacturing site. The cuts follow the FDA’s second rejection of the biotech’s advanced melanoma candidate.
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Doubling survival in pancreatic cancer, a long-fought rare disease approval, a massive IPO and ambitious biotech entrepreneurs have BioSpace Senior Editor Annalee Armstrong feeling upbeat about the biotech scene.
After Replimune’s advanced melanoma drug was rejected for a second time, CEO Sushil Patel slammed the FDA for failing to exercise regulatory flexibility, while other experts bemoaned the agency’s lack of consistency. With new safety guidelines for gene editing therapies, the FDA has taken a first step toward fixing both problems.
The Merck update, which will shed light on a $588 million bet to succeed Keytruda, is part of a roster of presentations that could shape the future of ADCs, protein degraders and KRAS-targeted therapies.
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Novo Nordisk’s oral Wegovy has a few months’ head start on Eli Lilly’s newly approved pill. While the Indianapolis pharma has come from behind the Danish rival in the weight loss space before, last time it clearly had the better drug.
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Ralph Abraham, a vocal vaccine skeptic who served at the agency for just three months, has stepped down due to “unforeseen family obligations,” according to the CDC.
Bysanti is based on iloperidone, an active metabolite of a compound that forms the core of Fanapt, another drug by Vanda Pharmaceuticals.
A lower court had previously ruled for Sarepta in the companies’ long-running dispute, finding that REGENXBIO’s AAV patent was invalid because its elements were naturally occurring. The appeals court on Friday said that this original decision adopts a “narrow” view of the invention.
The centerpiece of the takeover is anito-cel, a CAR T therapy under development for relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma. An FDA decision on the therapy is expected by December 2026.
Head-to-head trials are often reserved for approved therapies as drugmakers try to one-up each other to gain further market share. In this case, Novo Nordisk ran the test at the candidate stage, and the bet did not pay off.
The U.S. Congress greenlit a historic $315 million in federal ALS research funding for 2026 amid Rare Disease Month, spotlighting biotech progress like VectorY Therapeutics’ first patient dosing in its TDP-43-targeting PIONEER-ALS trial and EverythingALS’ pharma consortia driving biomarker innovations and trial alignment.
The first gene therapies approved to treat sickle cell disease in December 2023 are struggling on the market. But there are glimpses of forward momentum as Vertex and Genetix Bio provide updates.
After last year’s ‘stampede’ for FGF21 assets, the focus for the metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis space has shifted toward differentiated approaches, such as THR-β agonists and combination treatments, that seek to mirror the commercial success of Madrigal’s Rezdiffra.
Following the FDA’s refusal to review Moderna’s investigational mRNA flu vaccine last week, Commissioner Marty Makary faced questions from the U.S. president about the agency’s handling of vaccines. It’s a clear signal that the tension long brewing at the drug regulator has now gone all the way to the top.
Maintaining America’s momentum demands that policymakers resist policies that undermine research and development incentives.