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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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Inclacumab, which Pfizer obtained in its 2022 acquisition of Global Blood Therapeutics, failed to significantly lower pain episodes in patients with sickle cell disease over the 48-week treatment period.
Kriya is advancing a host of gene therapies for a wide variety of chronic diseases, including geographic atrophy, trigeminal neuralgia and type 1 diabetes.
In Phase III studies, Tonmya showed significantly superior analgesic effects in patients with fibromyalgia versus placebo. The sublingual pill also led to better clinical outcomes.
The label expansion could help Novo Nordisk “help shift the momentum” for Wegovy, after a difficult start to 2025, according to analysts at BMO Capital Markets.
BioSpace data show biopharma professionals faced increased competition for fewer employment opportunities during the second quarter of 2025, with increased pressure from further layoffs.
Papzimeos is the first immunotherapy approved for recurrent respiratory papillomatosis, a rare lung disorder involving the development of benign tumors in the airways.
The move comes after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. received pressure from the Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine non-profit that he co-founded, which last month sued him over his failure to run the “statutorily required Task Force on childhood vaccine,” according to the lawsuit.
The Department of Health and Human Services’ mRNA pullback only applies to their use in upper respiratory disease, according to Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
As Trump has pressured drugmakers to lower the cost of medicines in the U.S., the pharma industry has coalesced behind a message of rebalancing what nations pay to better reflect the innovation and value of drugmaking.
The Boston-based AI/ML startup focuses on endocrine and cardiometabolic diseases and will use that expertise to generate new small molecule obesity medications for Lilly.