Gilead pays $405M price tag for MiroBio
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Today's Rundown

Featured Story

Late to the CAR-T game, AstraZeneca quietly works on its own off-the-shelf therapies

While AstraZeneca may be a major player in the oncology space, the company has been noticeably absent as the first wave of CAR-T therapies hit the market over the past five years. But movement is happening behind the scenes.

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Top Stories

Amgen hits pause on $400M eczema bet to tweak phase 3 study

Amgen’s $400 million bet on Kyowa Kirin’s atopic dermatitis has hit a bump in the road. Weeks after starting a 570-subject phase 3 clinical trial, the partners have paused patient enrollment to make changes to the study that are unrelated to safety or efficacy.

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Gilead pays out $405M for a chance to compete with Eli Lilly’s BTLA program

Pharma giant Gilead is handing over $405 million cash in exchange for MiroBio, a biotech developing BTLA and PD-1 autoimmune programs to go up against the likes of Big Pharmas Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson. MiroBio, a private U.K. biotech helmed by Novartis alum Carolin Barth, M.D., was formed to develop agonists targeting immune inhibitory receptors.

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Lilly 'won't be discouraged' if others fail in Alzheimer's, neuroscience chief says

Eli Lilly "won't be discouraged" if its Alzheimer's competitors flunk their critical tests, neuroscience chief Anne White has declared. The senior VP took the firm stance as Lilly announced that donanemab has been accepted for a priority review by the FDA in early onset Alzheimer's under the accelerated review pathway.

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Intellia tacks on lower dose to polyneuropathy trial arm after elevated liver level in one patient

Intellia revealed a couple of pipeline changes today. Most notably, the company is adding a lower dose to the polyneuropathy arm of its ATTR trial after elevated liver enzyme levels were found in one patient 28 days after treatment.

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Thinning its $11B Array of options, Pfizer drops cardiology drug after phase 3 fails futility check

Pfizer is axing one of the assets it picked up in the $11.4 billion takeover of Ar­ray Bio­Phar­ma three years ago. After carrying out a phase 3 interim futility analysis, the Big Pharma has decided to stop work on the cardiovascular disease candidate PF-07265803.

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Amgen, on an M&A spree, inks $3.7B ChemoCentryx buyout to boost inflammatory disease presence

Facing one of the biopharma industry’s steepest patent cliffs for the decade, Amgen has been on a shopping spree. The latest purchase? A $3.7 billion deal to acquire complement inhibitor developer ChemoCentryx.

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Despite slipping sales, Siemens passes COVID testing revenue goal a quarter early

Siemens' latest earnings push the year’s COVID testing total to about 1.31 billion euros, sending it past the 1.3 billion euro goal it previously set for the year—well ahead of schedule.

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Cigna boosts guidance as it posts $1.6B in profit for Q2

Cigna posted $1.6 billion in profit and $45.5 billion in revenue for the second quarter, according to its earnings report released Thursday.

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Thermo Fisher, plugging ahead on $650M bioprocessing upgrade, unveils $76M expansion at US site

Thermo Fisher has completed an expansion at its dry powder media manufacturing plant in Grand Island, New York, creating “redundant capacity” and expanding the site’s production arsenal to include technology and materials used in the development and commercial production of new vaccines and biologic drugs.

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Virtual reality tech helps separate conjoined twins in Brazil

The life-saving potential of VR is now on full display, as physicians in Brazil and the U.K. reported this week the success of a VR-guided surgery to separate twins who were joined at the skull.

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Over 2,000 Kaiser mental health workers plan open-ended strike

Scheduled to begin Aug. 15, the demonstrations center around contract negotiations and calls for expanded mental health services for Kaiser Permanente's members. The system's human resources head said the announcement was "perplexing" given how close the parties were to striking a deal just last week.

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Despite drug launch streak, Lilly posts rare sales decline as Alimta succumbs to generics

Even as Eli Lilly puts much of its energy behind a suite of new drug launches, an older cancer medicine that just tumbled off the patent cliff is proving to be a big drag on the company's financial performance. Approved in 2004 and used to treat lung cancer and mesothelioma, Alimta lost its last U.S. patent in May.

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