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A surprising deal from Vertex Pharmaceuticals adds to Big Pharma’s acquisitive streak as Crinetics folds into the cystic fibrosis drugmaker. Meanwhile, IPOs and venture capital raises trend upward, but mostly for derisked companies. Plus, FDA decisions slow only slightly as the hunt for a permanent leader drags on.
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After debuting on the public markets with $256.3 million and raking in an additional $472 million, Veradermics has emerged as one of biotech’s biggest post-IPO standouts. CEO Reid Waldman credits the weight loss craze for establishing consumer-driven channels.
Molecular glue degraders are gaining traction in the clinic as well as funding from Big Pharma, with their potential to treat previously “undruggable” cancers and immunological diseases. Here are five clinical programs worth keeping an eye on.
Last month, the FDA launched TrialBlazer, intended to streamline the IND path and bring early clinical trials and medical innovation home to the U.S. It’s a start, but new agency leadership must see it through.
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Congressional letters sent to the CEOs of Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Merck, BMS and AbbVie this week voicing concerns about the pharmas’ clinical trials in China highlight an ongoing discrepancy in how government and industry think about the rise of the Asian country’s biotech industry.
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The program has recently become controversial as a number of high-profile advanced approvals were granted only for the drugs to fail a confirmatory trial later on. Now, the FDA has clearly laid out expectations.
Protara is advancing a cell therapy that triggers both adaptive and innate antitumor immune responses, while CG Oncology’s approach makes use of an oncolytic immunotherapy that preferentially targets cancer cells and proliferates inside them, destroying them from the inside.
Eli Lilly is aggressively ramping up its manufacturing capacity for tirzepatide as compounding pharmacies continue to challenge an FDA decision to formally end the shortage of the obesity and diabetes drug.
It is not clear what specifically the new facility will produce, though Amgen could be ramping up its manufacturing capacity as it prepares to enter the obesity space with MariTide.
Iskra Reic will continue to serve as the pharma’s senior vice president for Vaccines and Immune Therapies as she steps in for Leon Wang, who was detained by Chinese authorities in November.
California-based biotech Nuvig Therapeutics scooped up $161 million from the investment arms of Sanofi, Bayer, Novo Holdings, BMS and others for its Fc fragment immunomodulator aimed at improving autoimmune dysregulation.
The Muna partnership will give GSK access to Muna’s MiND-MAP platform, which it will apply to postmortem brain samples to identify potential therapeutic targets for Alzheimer’s disease.
Novartis is seeking to prevent the entry of generics for its blockbuster heart failure drug Entresto, its top-selling asset that brought in more than $6 billion in net global sales last year.
The payment scheme will tie gene therapy payments to improvements in health outcomes—and could potentially boost the uptake of these sickle cell disease treatments.
In recent months Novo Nordisk has invested several billions of dollars to boost its manufacturing capacity—including its highly contested $16.5 billion merger with CDMO giant Catalent.