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IPO
After debuting on the public markets with $256.3 million and raking in an additional $472 million, Veradermics has emerged as one of biotech’s biggest post-IPO standouts. CEO Reid Waldman credits the weight loss craze for establishing consumer-driven channels.
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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.
FDA
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.
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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If cell and gene therapy makers are going to achieve their mission to improve patients’ lives, the industry must come together to share information across stakeholders, from regulators to manufacturers to payers.
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BPL-003 showed “robust” efficacy data in treatment-resistant depression, according to analysts from Jefferies, who noted that the asset could hit peak market sales of $1 billion. The results clear the way for the asset’s late-stage development and for the completion of a proposed merger with atai Life Sciences.
Macrocyclic peptides are designed to engage complex targets like biologics but pass through cell membranes like small molecule drugs.
The pivotal trial for Neurogene’s Rett syndrome gene therapy makes use of baseline controls and a rigorous endpoint that could help ensure a broader label for the drug product, if approved, according to analysts.
With PN-477, Protagonist is directly going up against Eli Lilly, which is advancing retatrutide, also a triple-G agonist, in a Phase II trial.
Pfizer insists that the discontinuation of the Phase II study was due to recruitment difficulties and was not linked to maplirpacept’s safety or efficacy.
Big Pharmas like Eli Lilly, Sanofi and Novartis headed back to the dealmakers table multiple times, with 32 total deals counted across the industry for the first half.
In a detail-thin announcement, Amgen said that adding bemarituzumab to chemotherapy improved overall survival, though analysts pledged to wait for more data on safety and tolerability before assessing the drug.
The all-cash buyout, which gives AbbVie access to Capstan Therapeutics’ in vivo edited CAR T therapy for B cell–mediated autoimmune diseases, adds to a growing sense of momentum in M&A, according to BMO Capital Markets.
BMS is letting go of 68 employees in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. The pharma has now cut over 1,000 employees there since April 2024 as part of its cost-cutting measures.
The rise of monoclonal antibodies brought back hope for stalling or reversing the devastating neurodegenerative disease. Big Pharma has taken notice with a handful of high-value deals, GlobalData reports.