News

An inspection of a facility making Elevar’s rivoceranib uncovered deficiencies, leading the FDA to reject a combination therapy that includes the drug. The rebuff is the third strike for the partners after the agency issued manufacturing-related denials for the other drug in the combo.
FEATURED STORIES
As antibody-drug conjugates advance and move into earlier lines of treatment, drug developers have to build gentler therapies that don’t just extend survival but improve it.
FDA’s rare disease decisions are strongest when the patient community has a voice in advisory committee decisions.
The lineup at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference will provide critical insight into where the industry is headed with regard to targets being explored to vanquish the elusive neurodegenerative disease.
Job Trends
FROM OUR EDITORS
Read our takes on the biggest stories happening in the industry.
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.
THE LATEST
Venture Capital firms Atlas Venture, Bain Capital Life Sciences and RTW Investments have led a $400 million Series A for Kailera Therapeutics, the latest obesity biotech to hit the scene.
A week after it released positive early-stage data, Metsera has partnered with Amneal Pharmaceuticals in an effort to secure the development and supply of its investigational weight loss therapy MET-097.
In an effort to expand its cash runway beyond 12 months, Prime Medicine has signed a deal with Bristol Myers Squibb worth a potential $3.5 billion, while also streamlining its pipeline to trim costs.
M&A
The acquisition was featured Monday in Roche’s Pharma Day presentation, which also included projections of more than $3 billion in annual sales from three early-stage obesity and diabetes drugs.
Six months after treatment with the radiopharmaceutical therapy, 77.8% of patients with meningioma were alive and had not experienced further disease progression, beating the 26% benchmark established in earlier studies.
Johnson & Johnson linked Carvykti to a 45% reduction in risk of death and Darzalex to a 61% improvement in minimal residual disease-negativity, boosting the prospects of two key growth drivers for the company.
After the FDA declined to approve Lykos Therapeutics’ MDMA-assisted therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, companies are pivoting away from or delaying similar therapeutics targeting the psychiatric disease.
Women are already underrepresented in clinical trials; the new abortion and IVF laws could make it worse.
One upcoming decision—on a perioperative PD-1 regimen for lung cancer—comes as the FDA considers an overhaul of trial designs in this treatment setting.
Pfizer’s sudden market withdrawal of sickle cell therapy Oxbryta, which some analysts predicted would reach $750 million in sales by the end of the decade, has left patients and healthcare providers with few options, while investors question the pharma giant’s dealmaking prowess.