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Johnson & Johnson’s $23.7 billion in second-quarter earnings, driven by cancer and neuroscience drugs, exceeded analyst expectations, while CEO Joaquin Duato set a target of $50 billion in oncology sales by 2030.
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Johnson & Johnson’s Joaquin Duato is no longer the highest paid CEO in pharma. Meanwhile, just two women make the top 10.
AI is enabling the development of a next generation of drugs that can more precisely target cancer cells while sparing healthy tissues.
FDA
After the gutting of the Department of Health and Human Services, fears mount about the future direction of the FDA—with regulatory experts predicting delays in drug approvals and greater influence of political appointees.
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FDA
Pfizer Inc. announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved BEQVEZ™ for the treatment of adults with moderate to severe hemophilia B who currently use factor IX prophylaxis therapy, or have current or historical life-threatening hemorrhage, or have repeated, serious spontaneous bleeding episodes, and do not have neutralizing antibodies to adeno-associated virus serotype Rh74var capsid as detected by an FDA-approved test.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—along with FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and CBER Director Vinay Prasad—argued against vaccine mandates, partly because they limited medical choice. This week, the FDA under their leadership approved updated COVID-19 vaccines with restrictions that do the same.
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Sanofi paid a more than 300% premium on its acquisition of Vigil Neuroscience, suggesting a fierce battle to seal the deal. Across biopharma, companies are sometimes willing to put it all on the line for the right buyout. Novartis’ recent acquisition of Regulus for $800 million upfront provides a case study.
FDA
The program will bring together experts from across the FDA for a team-based review, rather than having an application move across numerous offices within the agency before getting a yay or nay.
Nearly $30 million in tax incentive awards are expected to add 1,519 new life sciences jobs in Massachusetts, with about 52% of the positions spread over Boston and Cambridge. Vertex, which received the largest award, will create hundreds of roles in Boston.
Jefferies analysts said on Tuesday that Ventyx could leverage its mid-stage data for VTX3232 to position the oral drug candidate as a treatment for other neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s.
The pending deal was rumored overnight after a report from the Financial Times, spurring analysts to speculate that if true, the entire gene editing space would see a boost at the markets.
Venclexta, when combined with azacitidine, elicited an overall survival benefit below 10% in patients with myelodysplastic syndromes.
District Judge William Young, a nominee of Republican President Ronald Reagan, blasted the Trump administration’s NIH cuts as discriminatory and “bearing down on people of color because of their color.”
CDC
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s actions in recent months have raised concerns that he is taking a heavy-handed and unilateral approach to vaccine policy in the U.S.
Big Pharma executives have not been shy about their desire for deals, but companies have been battling macro headwinds alongside Trump’s policies on drug pricing and tariff threats.
The deal gets NextCure the rights to Simcere’s novel ADC for solid tumors outside of China.