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Incyte targets von Willebrand disease with $2B Vega buy
Incyte agreed to acquire Vega Therapeutics in a deal valued at up to $2 billion to add VGA039, a Phase III candidate for von Willebrand disease (VWD). The asset is designed as a subcutaneous...
Merck and Gilead pursue first weekly oral HIV pill
Merck and Gilead reported positive results from two Phase 3 trials of a combination regimen intended to become the first weekly oral HIV treatment. The approach pairs Merck’s islatravir with...
J&J moves into degrader-antibody conjugates via Firefly Bio
Johnson & Johnson agreed to buy Firefly Bio for $1 billion in cash, stepping further into the emerging degrader-antibody conjugate (DAC) space. J&J said the deal expands its cancer technology...
Roche pays to co-develop Nurix BTK degrader
Roche agreed to pay Nurix Therapeutics $700 million upfront to co-develop and co-commercialize its BTK degrader bexobrutideg. The arrangement, valued at up to $2.3 billion in milestones, is...
Treeline lines up Nasdaq debut via reverse merger
Treeline Biosciences announced plans to enter public markets via a reverse merger with Standard BioTools, with the combined company expected to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol TRLN....
Dual Lassa-rabies vaccine posts Phase 1 immune and safety readouts
Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health reported interim Phase 1 results for a dual Lassa fever–rabies vaccine in Nature...
Diagnostics expansion: Cancer Research UK, Royal Marsden, Guardant to scale ctDNA testing
Cancer Research UK, the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, and Guardant Health said they will make circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) testing freely available for hundreds of patients with advanced...
Cell therapy and gene therapy manufacturing: VIVEbiotech adds 15th in vivo lentiviral program
VIVEbiotech reported it added its 15th in vivo lentiviral vector-based therapeutic program to its CGT platform, spanning applications such as in vivo CAR T, rare diseases, gene editing, and...
Clinical trial technology: AI precision improves liquid biopsy mutation calling
Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers introduced plasmaCHORD, a machine learning approach intended to improve mutation identification accuracy from liquid biopsy samples. The tool is...
Oncology M&A: GSK lands late-stage lung assets from Nuvalent
GlaxoSmithKline agreed to buy Nuvalent for $10.6 billion, giving the UK drugmaker two late-stage, FDA-reviewed lung cancer inhibitors—zidesamtinib (NVL-520) and neladalkib (NVL-655)—with target...
Oncology M&A: J&J buys Firefly to enter degrader antibody conjugates
Johnson & Johnson agreed to acquire Firefly Bio for $1 billion in cash, aiming to expand its oncology pipeline with degrader-antibody conjugates (DACs). The deal gives J&J access to Firefly’s...
Hematology M&A: Incyte buys Vega Therapeutics for late-stage VWD candidate
Incyte agreed to buy Vega Therapeutics for $1.25 billion upfront, adding Vega’s Phase 3 monoclonal antibody VGA-039 as a potential new growth driver in von Willebrand disease (VWD). The deal...
Diagnostics scale-up: CRUK partners to expand ctDNA testing via Guardant360
Cancer Research UK is partnering with the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and Guardant Health to make circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) testing freely available to hundreds of patients with...
Rapid pancreatic cancer detection: Biocartis and City of Hope explore Idylla blood test
Biocartis and City of Hope announced a partnership to develop a rapid, sample-to-answer blood test for early pancreatic cancer detection, using Biocartis’ Idylla technology platform. Financial...
Company going public: Treeline merges with Standard BioTools to list on Nasdaq
Treeline Biosciences plans to debut on public markets through a reverse merger with Standard BioTools, combining the two companies into Treeline Biosciences under the Nasdaq ticker TRLN. The...
RNAi financing: City Therapeutics raises $99.5M Series B to expand clinical pipeline
City Therapeutics, an RNA interference (RNAi) startup founded by former Alnylam executives, completed a $99.5 million Series B financing to advance multiple RNAi candidates. The company said the...
New IND clearance: Amphista advances BRD9 degrader AMX-883 into AML trial
Amphista Therapeutics received FDA IND clearance for AMX-883, an orally bioavailable BRD9 degrader, for treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The company said a Phase 1 trial for patients...
Pivotal biomarkers: 14-protein blood signature predicts lung cancer risk years ahead
Researchers identified a 14-protein blood signature that can predict lung cancer risk up to five years before diagnosis. The work, published in Cell, was a collaboration between the Francis Crick...
Clinical-grade cell therapies: Moderna mRNA-4194 cleared for Lynch syndrome trial in the UK
Moderna and the University of Oxford said the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) authorized a Phase I/II study of mRNA-4194, Moderna’s mRNA-based cancer vaccine for...
Mega-deals reshape oncology and protein-degrader strategy
Johnson & Johnson moved deeper into KRAS-directed cancer space, agreeing to buy Firefly Bio for $1 billion in cash. The acquisition gives J&J access to Firefly’s degrader-antibody conjugate (DAC)...