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With the latest layoffs, Novartis expects to let go of around 800 employees by the end of 2028. More than half of the cuts have been at the company’s East Hanover, New Jersey, location.
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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.
Significant leadership instability at the FDA—compounded by continued workforce attrition—led to a slight slowdown in overall regulatory productivity in the first half of this year, but the agency has been catching up of late.
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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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CSL is advancing clazakizumab for the treatment of cardiovascular events in end-stage kidney disease and will retain rights over the asset in this indication. Lilly will explore other conditions.
The FDA outright refuses to review Moderna’s mRNA-based flu vaccine as CBER director Vinay Prasad’s conduct is scrutinized; Disc Medicine receives an unexpected rejection, which Prasad may also have had a hand in; Compass Pathways posts new late-stage data on its psilocybin-based depression drug; CDC is once again leaderless.
With leaner teams and tighter budgets, senior leaders can face tremendous strain as they juggle increased workloads and leadership responsibilities. In this column, Kaye/Bassman’s Michael Pietrack discusses how pressure builds and what can ease it.
PitchBook’s 2025 biopharma VC analysis clocked $33.8 billion in capital dispatched in 2025, mainly to companies with later-stage programs ready to roll into the clinic.
Long an R&D company that partnered off assets, RNAi biotech Ionis Pharmaceuticals shifted in 2025 to bring two medicines to market alone. Analysts are already impressed—and there’s more to come in 2026.
Regulatory uncertainty is no longer background noise. It is a material investment risk that reshapes how capital is deployed and pipelines are prioritized.
An analysis finds that pharmas frequently file multiple similar patents on drugs, then use them as the basis for questionable litigation against would-be competitors.
Disc Medicine’s leadership tried to express optimism that its rare disease therapy bitopertin can be approved based on a Phase 3 trial set to begin shortly. However, analysts are worried that the protocol was developed with former FDA leaders.
Evidence of durability of psilocybin-based COMP360 is a key point for the FDA, according to Compass Pathways Chief Medical Officer Guy Goodwin. By providing 26 weeks’ worth of such data instead of the requested 12, the company is delivering “in spades,” he said.
Competing with giants like Takeda and Moderna, the plucky biotech believes it has unlocked a future with an easy, yearly oral vaccine.