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The Senate failed to pass a massive spending bill on Thursday—which includes the rare pediatric PRV program but also funding for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s large-scale crackdown in Minnesota and other states.
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With the biopharma industry performing better of late, analysts, executives and other industry watchers are “cautiously optimistic”—a term heard all over the streets of San Francisco at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference earlier this month.
Bristol Myers Squibb, GSK and Merck are contributing drug ingredients as part of their deals with the White House but are keeping many of the terms of their agreements private.
Some 200 rare disease therapies are at risk of losing eligibility for a pediatric priority review voucher, a recent analysis by the Rare Disease Company Coalition shows. That could mean $4 billion in missed revenue for already cash-strapped biotechs.
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Phacilitate’s annual event dawns as cell and gene therapies reach a new tipping point: the science has hit new heights just as regulatory and government policies spark momentum and frustration.
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Although still in Phase I, Wave Life Sciences’ injectable RNA weight loss treatment achieved results that impressed analysts, with 4% fat reduction after three months, beating Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide at a similar time point.
The 2025 meeting of the American Society of Hematology features some of the newest developments in blood cancers and rare diseases.
Dyne’s exon-skipping therapy zeleciment rostudirsen resulted in an approximately sevenfold increase in dystrophin levels at six months and elicited functional improvements that are the “best ever” for this treatment class, Stifel analysts said.
GSK and Ideaya first linked up in 2020 to advance novel therapies for solid tumors. It is unclear why the pharma terminated the partnership.
Analysts at Jefferies see blockbuster potential in zorevunersen in Dravet syndrome, with sales potentially reaching $1 billion to $4 billion.
The pharmaceutical supply chain and device development have become intricately linked. Harmonizing formulation development with drug delivery device design—and leveraging a single‐vendor ecosystem—can deliver significant time, cost, and regulatory advantages for US‑focused drug products, according to industry experts.

FDA
As the FDA unveils a parade of initiatives aimed at accelerating drug development for rare diseases, experts appeal for a consistent approval process that will support and further catalyze momentum.
The R&D pipeline for depression therapies faced a demoralizing 2025 as five high-profile candidates, including KOR antagonists by Johnson & Johnson and Neumora Therapeutics, flunked late-stage clinical trials, underscoring the persistent challenges of CNS drug development.
Innovative outcome measures coupled with a focus on patient-centered clinical differentiation can help the biopharma industry make meaningful progress in the highly complex area of neuroscience.
Commissioner Marty Makary said that the FDA will soon start requiring only one pivotal trial, instead of two, for companies seeking approval for new drugs.