News
With the latest round, Roche’s Genentech will have racked up nearly 450 layoffs in California over the last year amid ongoing restructuring. At the same time, the biotech is joining forces with Astex Pharmaceuticals in a deal that could surpass $490 million.
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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.
The total of 52 mergers and acquisitions for the first half of 2026 reflects what analysts, industry watchers and executives are saying over and over: M&A is back.
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Read our takes on the biggest stories happening in the industry.
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.
THE LATEST
While a prolonged, 15-day regimen of Paxlovid is safe, it appears to be ineffective at lowering the symptoms of long COVID, according to results of a Phase II trial funded by Pfizer and conducted by Stanford Medicine.
The FDA on Friday approved GSK’s application to use Arexvy to vaccinate adults aged 50 to 59 years who are at increased risk of developing severe respiratory syncytial virus.
Biomea Fusion’s early-stage investigational diabetes treatment BMF-291 has been slapped with a full FDA clinical hold on its Phase I/II trials due to concerns over liver toxicity.
Approved for patients with low- to intermediate-risk myelodysplastic syndromes, Geron’s Rytelo is the first telomerase inhibitor to hit the market and the company’s first approved drug after 34 years in business.
The companies announced Friday that their candidate survodutide, which is licensed to Boehringer Ingelheim from Zealand Pharma, improved fibrosis in more than 50% of treated patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis.
After rejecting a previous takeover offer from Future Pak, Vanda Pharmaceuticals is now fielding another acquisition proposal from Cycle Pharmaceuticals, which values the biotech at $8 per share.
AbbVie’s antibody-drug conjugate Elahere, developed by ImmunoGen, elicited a nearly 52% objective response rate in heavily pretreated patients with folate receptor-alpha-positive, platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer.
In advance of an advisory committee meeting on Monday, the FDA’s internal reviewers have raised issues regarding Eli Lilly’s Alzheimer’s disease candidate donanemab, flagging problems with its study design and safety outcomes.
Both Eli Lilly and the partnered companies Boehringer Ingelheim and Zealand Pharma have mid-stage data readouts this week, fueling the race in metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis.
Zealand Pharma said on Thursday that partner Boehringer Ingelheim will present the results from the study on Friday at the European Association of the Study of Liver Congress.