Biopharma happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: Allurion, Bioarctic, Biogen, Cyrano, Eisai, Formycon, Foundation Medicine, Genprex, Kyorin, Longeveron, Scisparc, Stoke, Sumitomo.
Using ALK+ lung cancer patient-derived cell lines, researchers have performed phosphoproteomic screening and identified guanylate kinase 1 (GUK1) as a TKI sensitive metabolic molecule in ALK-driven lung cancer. They reported their results online in Cell on Feb. 6, 2025.
Solid Biosciences Inc. is preparing for a sit-down with the U.S. FDA this year to discuss the firm’s results with the next-generation gene therapy SGT-003 for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).
With Gilead Sciences Inc. stepping away from its exclusive option rights to casdatifan in treating cancer, Arcus Biosciences Inc. has decided to move on by pricing a $150 million common stock offering. Arcus said Gilead’s rights to the HIF-2a inhibitor, which just produced positive early phase data, had expired.
The former head of the U.S. NIH has sounded a warning that the uncertainty caused by the Trump Administration’s funding cuts and layoffs is blocking “critical work” and “paralyzing” biomedical research. “Every time we launch a new program, every time we continue to commit resources to ongoing work, those are important decisions that we make every single day, and in times like this, that decision-making is paralyzed,” said Monica Bertagnolli, who stood down as director of the NIH on Jan. 17.
The first clinical data from an FDA-approved trial of a CAR T-cell therapy in the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS) show the cells cause complete B-cell depletion, leading on to a reset of the immune system that is accompanied by an improvement in symptoms.