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The Most Favored Nation order is unlikely to deliver broad, sustained savings without triggering legal challenges, administrative friction and unintended consequences for both the healthcare sector and patient access.
FDA
While sparking excitement among biopharma companies focused on rare and ultrarare indications, experts say FDA Commissioner Marty Makary’s proposal is light on details and raises potential concerns about safety, access and liability.
The FDA and NIH recently announced plans to phase out animal testing requirements for some therapies. While organoid and AI providers celebrate, scientists warn that questions over safety, applicability and implementation remain.
Job Trends
Merck, known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada, announced that the Phase 3 KEYNOTE-B21 trial evaluating KEYTRUDA, Merck’s anti-PD-1 therapy, in combination with chemotherapy as adjuvant treatment, with or without radiotherapy, did not meet its primary endpoint of disease-free survival for the treatment of patients with newly diagnosed, high-risk endometrial cancer after surgery with curative intent.
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The deal marks an end for CAR T company Cargo Therapeutics, which has been slashing its workforce and cutting programs since the January decision to halt its lead candidate for a certain type of aggressive large B cell lymphoma.
President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, signed into law last week, reintroduces broader exemptions for orphan drugs from the IRA’s drug price negotiation program—a move welcomed by the biopharma industry. The new tax law also cuts Medicaid funding, posing a minimal risk to pharma’s bottomlines and potentially jeopardizing hospitals’ 340B status. It does not, however, include new rules for pharmacy benefit managers that had been in an earlier draft.
After issues with a batch of Jasper Therapeutics’ investigational antibody led to “lower” therapeutic effects in several patients, analysts at BMO Capital Markets said they “believe investors won’t feel comfortable coming back to the story.”
Societies, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, allege that Kennedy’s directive to remove COVID-19 from vaccination guidelines for healthy pregnant women and healthy children puts these vulnerable groups at risk of serious illness.
A readout from the company’s SUMMIT trial put its small molecule bezuclastinib on a collision course with rival Blueprint’s Ayvakit, which Leerink analysts said does not sufficiently treat all patients.
The partnership will give Chugai access to Gero’s artificial intelligence technology to discover novel targets in aging-related diseases. Chugai will then develop antibody-based drugs based on the findings.
After a season of regulatory upheaval, obesity and rare genetic diseases will likely remain major themes for biopharma in 2025, according to Jefferies.
Ekterly’s road to approval was not a smooth one. Last month, the FDA informed KalVista it would not meet its PDUFA date due to resource constraints and reports surfaced that Commissioner Marty Makary tried to have the application rejected.
Despite rehiring hundreds of FDA, CDC and NIH employees, the Department of Health and Human Services is still a skeleton of its former self under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
TIGIT-targeting therapies have largely disappointed in recent months, with failed studies, terminated partnerships and shuttered businesses. Here are five biopharma players staying alive with differentiated candidates against the once promising immuno-oncology target.