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In this episode of Denatured, as part of our series of the European life science investment ecosystem, you’ll be hearing from Regina Hodits, managing director at Angelini Ventures and Sofia Ioannidou, VC partner at Andera Life Sciences. They explore Germany’s biotech and life sciences ecosystem, including the science, infrastructure and policy changes needed to help European companies scale globally while staying rooted in Europe.
FEATURED STORIES
Clinical trial setbacks have limited the near-term opportunities for some of Daiichi Sankyo’s ADCs but the drug developer is betting near-term readouts will catapult it into the top tier of oncology companies in the coming years.
BioSpace analyzed the pay ratio across 10 major pharmaceutical companies to determine which CEOs were paid the most relative to typical employees. J&J, Eli Lilly and Pfizer once again topped the list.
Biotech is increasingly financed, governed and regulated as though it were a mature pharmaceutical industry rather than a discovery system built around scientific uncertainty. Structural changes are needed to sustain the sector’s strategic innovation.
FROM OUR EDITORS
Read our takes on the biggest stories happening in the industry.
The Department of Health and Human Services is spinning its wheels, unable to establish steady leadership at three major divisions—the CDC and the FDA’s two primary review units.
THE LATEST
As of Apr. 22, Sage had 338 full-time employees, all of whom will be laid off effective Aug. 22. The layoffs were announced a few weeks after Maryland’s Supernus Pharmaceuticals acquired Sage for up to $795 million.
FDA
The FDA’s clunky launch of Elsa, an AI tool to increase efficiency, has sparked concern from agency employees and outside experts.
Changing how biopharmas package their products, how regulators review new drugs and how mutated genes are fixed could make ultrarare disease treatments possible.
The FDA delivered two notable approvals for RSV immunization, UroGen overcame a negative advisory committee vote to secure an approval in bladder cancer, and more key regulatory nods from the past month.
The high court found that members of a task force that determines what preventive drugs must be covered can be removed at will by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The revamped and “more anti-vax skewed ACIP committee” at the CDC “has a bone to pick with mRNA vaccines,” according to Truist Securities analysts. Meanwhile, the FDA moves forward on having Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna update labels for their COVID vaccines.
The FDA found that data from a single Phase II study were “insufficient” to justify an accelerated approval review for sevasemten in Becker muscular dystrophy.
Altimmune’s pemvidutide failed to significantly improve fibrosis in MASH patients in a Phase IIb study. The biotech crashed 53% in the aftermath of the readout.
Calico will leverage 9MW3811’s anti-inflammatory mechanism to advance its mission of addressing aging-related diseases.
While ALTO-203 missed its depression-related endpoints, improvements in EEG biomarkers, attention and wakefulness point to signals of drug activity, William Blair said, though the analysts pointed to other indications as potentially more promising for future development.