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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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DS-9606 was supposed to be the first antibody-drug conjugate in Daiichi Sankyo’s line of anti-cancer assets to use a modified pyrrolobenzodiazepine payload.
The alliance will add to Roche’s RNAi efforts, which include the hypertension candidate zilbesiran, partnered with Alnylam under a July 2023 agreement.
While CagriSema bested Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy on blood sugar control in a late-stage trial, the next-gen weight loss drug still has not met the pharma’s 25% weight loss goal.
After advancing in lockstep through the pandemic, the fortunes of the biotechs have diverged as their use of COVID-19 windfalls has taken shape.
After suffering in the wake of expired tax incentives for pharmas, the island is trying to take advantage of geopolitics to grow its drug manufacturing sector.
While GSK did not provide a specific reason for returning Wave Life Sciences’ WVE-006, the decision comes after the asset in September 2025 came below analyst expectations in a Phase Ib/IIa AATD study.
The facility, which is part of Lilly’s $50 billion reshoring drive, will make obesity drugs such as tirzepatide and retatrutide when it starts operations in 2031.
Sanofi will take venglustat to regulators for Gaucher disease but an application for Fabry disease is less clear after the failure of a Phase III trial.
The program will allow for frequent communication with the FDA, giving manufacturers timely input and guidance regarding the design of their facilities.
Corcept’s relacorilant was rejected for hypercortisolism late last year—a decision which CEO Joseph Belanoff expressed surprise with at the time.