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BioSpace’s 2026 U.S. Life Sciences Employment Outlook examines the state of the biopharma workforce amid ongoing funding pressure, elevated layoffs and cautious hiring sentiment, while highlighting early signals of stabilization and cautious optimism for the year ahead.
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Bristol Myers Squibb, GSK and Merck are contributing drug ingredients as part of their deals with the White House but are keeping many of the terms of their agreements private.
Some 200 rare disease therapies are at risk of losing eligibility for a pediatric priority review voucher, a recent analysis by the Rare Disease Company Coalition shows. That could mean $4 billion in missed revenue for already cash-strapped biotechs.
Together with robust data-driven modeling, rethinking regulation and data use could push forward a notoriously challenging field.
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The FDA’s rare pediatric disease priority review voucher program missed reauthorization at the last minute in 2024; advocates have been fighting to get it back ever since.
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The deal marks an end for CAR T company Cargo Therapeutics, which has been slashing its workforce and cutting programs since the January decision to halt its lead candidate for a certain type of aggressive large B cell lymphoma.
President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, signed into law last week, reintroduces broader exemptions for orphan drugs from the IRA’s drug price negotiation program—a move welcomed by the biopharma industry. The new tax law also cuts Medicaid funding, posing a minimal risk to pharma’s bottomlines and potentially jeopardizing hospitals’ 340B status. It does not, however, include new rules for pharmacy benefit managers that had been in an earlier draft.
After issues with a batch of Jasper Therapeutics’ investigational antibody led to “lower” therapeutic effects in several patients, analysts at BMO Capital Markets said they “believe investors won’t feel comfortable coming back to the story.”
Societies, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, allege that Kennedy’s directive to remove COVID-19 from vaccination guidelines for healthy pregnant women and healthy children puts these vulnerable groups at risk of serious illness.
A readout from the company’s SUMMIT trial put its small molecule bezuclastinib on a collision course with rival Blueprint’s Ayvakit, which Leerink analysts said does not sufficiently treat all patients.
The partnership will give Chugai access to Gero’s artificial intelligence technology to discover novel targets in aging-related diseases. Chugai will then develop antibody-based drugs based on the findings.
After a season of regulatory upheaval, obesity and rare genetic diseases will likely remain major themes for biopharma in 2025, according to Jefferies.
Ekterly’s road to approval was not a smooth one. Last month, the FDA informed KalVista it would not meet its PDUFA date due to resource constraints and reports surfaced that Commissioner Marty Makary tried to have the application rejected.
Despite rehiring hundreds of FDA, CDC and NIH employees, the Department of Health and Human Services is still a skeleton of its former self under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
TIGIT-targeting therapies have largely disappointed in recent months, with failed studies, terminated partnerships and shuttered businesses. Here are five biopharma players staying alive with differentiated candidates against the once promising immuno-oncology target.