News
The number of employees laid off and companies letting people go increased year over year during the first half of 2025. BioSpace recaps the five largest layoff rounds, including cuts at Bayer, BMS and Teva.
FEATURED STORIES
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.
Slashing adverse drug reactions through pharmacogenetics and advanced AI could help rehabilitate the pharmaceutical industry’s reputation amid mounting criticism.
Analysts believe that Gilead’s new PrEP drug Yeztugo could reach peak sales of $4.5 billion. Not if GSK has anything to say about it.
Job Trends
Nearly $30 million in tax incentive awards are expected to add 1,519 new life sciences jobs in Massachusetts, with about 52% of the positions spread over Boston and Cambridge. Vertex, which received the largest award, will create hundreds of roles in Boston.
FROM OUR EDITORS
Read our takes on the biggest stories happening in the industry.
When it comes to vaccination, the COVID-19 pandemic divided American society. President Donald Trump and his new Health and Human Services secretary are bringing down the hammer. What happens when there is no middle ground?
THE LATEST
Analysts said the deal with Novo was likely giving Hims “‘credibility’ or increased consumer traffic,” adding that the “litigation risk is back on the table” now that the Danish pharma has stepped away.
The industry sector focused on aging is only about 10 years old, but acting on what scientists already know, a new crop of biotechs, backed by investors, are taking a disease-centric approach to extending the human lifespan.
BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics issued a statement Tuesday supporting a Citizens’ Petition submitted to the FDA requesting the approval of its cell therapy NurOwn, whose BLA was withdrawn in 2023. A Phase IIIb trial was scheduled to begin last month.
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.