News

FEATURED STORIES
IPO
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.
FROM OUR EDITORS
Read our takes on the biggest stories happening in the industry.
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.
THE LATEST
Tecvayli plus Darzalex led to an 83% boost to progression-free survival versus the current standard therapy in relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, results analysts at Guggenheim Securities called “remarkable.”
FDA
Richard Pazdur, the new director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, raised concerns amid the rollout of several FDA initiatives seeking to shorten the drug review process.
Alicia Jackson formerly served as deputy director of the Biological Technologies Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Experts suggest the FDA’s Advanced Manufacturing Technologies designation could be a lifeline for improving production processes for approved cell and gene therapies.
Johnson & Johnson will discontinue the Phase II Auτonomy study of posdinemab after a scheduled review found the anti-tau antibody failed to slow clinical decline in patients with early Alzheimer’s disease.
Analysts agree that the failure of Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide to reduce Alzheimer’s disease progression removes a “modest” or “perceived” overhang on Biogen and the anti-amyloid antibody class in general, clearing the way for increased uptake of Leqembi and Eli Lilly’s Kisunla.
“We felt we had a responsibility to explore semaglutide’s potential, despite a low likelihood of success,” Martin Holst Lange, Novo’s R&D chief, said on Monday.
NervGen will meet with the FDA early next year to align on a regulatory path forward for NVG-291 in chronic spinal cord injury.
Asundexian’s Phase III win could also bode well for Bristol Myers Squibb, which is also developing a Factor XIa inhibitor called milvexian for stroke prevention, analysts said.
A source familiar with the matter said the White House initially requested the resignation of Sanjula Jain-Nagpal, a policy and research official at the FDA.