With confidence dropping in doing business with China-affiliated life sciences companies due to the Biosecure Act, one of the companies explicitly named in the U.S. legislation is fighting back. Raising the possibility of a constitutional challenge to the bill, Rade Drmanac, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Complete Genomics Inc., wrote to congressional leaders to urge them to remove the California-based subsidiary of MGI from the bill.

The U.S. FDA has issued yet another complete response letter (CRL) for dasiglucagon, a glucagon receptor agonist, being developed by Zealand Pharma A/S for treating congenital hyperinsulinism, an ultra-rare disease that is also being targeted by at least two other companies. This CRL is pegged to the timing of a third-party manufacturing facility reinspection that was done in August and September. The agency also wants some additional clinical analysis from the phase III study.

New hires and promotions in the biopharma industry, including: Abalos, Anavo, Aprea, Calluna, Curve, Dignify, Oncovita, Urogen.

Biopharma happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: Aosaikang, Autonomous, Bayer, Black Diamond, Innovent, Lipocine, Mink, Moma, Pharmalink, Pharmanovia, Siga, Tonix, Zambon.

Clinical updates, including trial initiations, enrollment status and data readouts and publications: Biogen, Blue Earth, Gilead, GSK, Kiromic, Merck & Co., PTC, Relief, Sage, Satsuma, Vincerx.

Biopharmas raising money in public or private financings, including: City, Orasis, Scholar Rock, Scilex, Somagenetix.

David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper share the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their contributions to the science of protein structure. David Baker was awarded half the prize “for computational protein design,” according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Hassabis and Jumper shared the other half “for protein structure prediction.”