Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH terminated its second metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) alliance on March 6, ending an $870 million license agreement inked with Yuhan Corp. for dual GLP-1/FGF21 agonist, BI-3006337 (YH-25724). Yuhan said March 7 that Boehringer, of Ingelheim, Germany, returned rights to YH-25724, a dual-acting glucagon-like peptide-1 and fibroblast growth factor 21 receptor agonist, based on the counterparty’s “strategic judgement” on developing MASH therapeutics.

Insilico Medicine founder and CEO Alex Zhavoronkov told BioWorld that he tries to spend as much time as possible in China, because that's where the artificial intelligence (AI) drug development company conducts synthesis and tests for early stage discovery. “And nowadays, not a day goes by without somebody launching an AI drug discovery company,” he said, noting that Chinese AI company Deepseek could be a huge disrupter.

Rusfertide could become a blockbuster therapy for polycythemia vera, H.C. Wainwright analyst Douglas Tsao wrote March 4 after the injectable hepcidin mimetic peptide hit its primary endpoint and all four key secondary endpoints in the ongoing phase III Verify study.

The U.K. has released a huge repository of children’s genomic data after sequencing blood samples from three large cohorts recruited at birth and followed across three decades. The power of the data is amplified by the large volume of longitudinal health information, biological samples and responses to surveys and questionnaires that has been provided by participating families. Before this, large-scale publicly available genome sequences were limited to adult cohorts, and the only childhood genome sequence data was from children with rare diseases.

HBM Alpha Therapeutics Inc. signed a potential $395 million licensing deal Feb. 26 with an unnamed “business partner” for its endocrine asset, HAT-001, adding another contender to the congenital adrenal hyperplasia space.

The U.K. has released a huge repository of children’s genomic data after sequencing blood samples from three large cohorts recruited at birth and followed across three decades. The power of the data is amplified by the large volume of longitudinal health information, biological samples and responses to surveys and questionnaires that has been provided by participating families.

As U.S. regulatory uncertainty swirls around the vaccine space and health care in general, Vaxcyte Inc. stands poised for a readout of phase II infant data by the end of this quarter with VAX-24, the 24-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV). The San Carlos, Calif.-based firm will offer top-line safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity data, to be followed by top-line data with the booster dose by the end of this year.

On March 1, 2025, former NIH director Francis Collins’ announced that he had fully resigned from the NIH, where he continued to lead a laboratory after his resignation as director. Collins gave no reason for his resignation, but it comes just before this week’s confirmation hearings for Jay Bhattacharya, who is U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the NIH and who Collins called a “fringe epidemiologist” during the COVID pandemic. It is a bitter irony that when Collins resigned as NIH director in 2021, then-President Joe Biden said that “countless researchers will aspire to follow in his footsteps.”