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By Brian Buntz | June 15, 2025

Dupixent bests Xolair in first head-to-head respiratory trial: 4 takeaways

On the heels of announcing positive data for Dupixent (dupilumab) in atopic dermatitis patients with darker skin tones, Sanofi and Regeneron have announced that the monoclonal antibody outperformed Xolair (omalizumab) in the phase 4 EVEREST trial. Marking the first head-to-head comparison of biologic respiratory medicines, the study focused on patients with severe chronic rhinosinusitis with…

By Brian Buntz | June 13, 2025

Recursion-MIT AI screens thousands of molecules before a single FEP run completes

Free-energy perturbation (FEP) has long been pharma’s gold standard for gauging how tightly a small molecule binds its protein target, yet each simulation can take 6 to 24 hours and cost hundreds of dollars. Boltz-2, a new open-source model from MIT and Recursion available on GitHub, delivers FEP-class accuracy in about 18 seconds on a…

By Julia Rock-Torcivia | June 12, 2025

RFK appoints eight new ACIP members

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced eight new members to the CDC’s advisory committee on immunization practices on Wednesday, just two days after he removed all 17 sitting members.  Kennedy announced on X that he is appointing Joseph R. Hibbeln, MD; Martin Kulldorff, MD, Ph.D.; Retsef Levi, Ph.D.; Robert W. Malone,…

By Julia Rock-Torcivia | June 12, 2025

Zoliflodacin wins FDA nod for treatment of gonorrhea

The FDA has approved zoliflodacin, a single-dose, spiropyrimidinetrione oral antibiotic for the treatment of uncomplicated gonorrhea in adults and pediatric patients 12 years and older, Innoviva announced on Tuesday. The oral antibiotic inhibits type II topoisomerase, a bacterial enzyme crucial to bacterial function and reproduction.  What laid the groundwork for FDA’s zoliflodacin approval The FDA…

By Julia Rock-Torcivia | June 11, 2025

Secretary of Health removes all current members of the CDC advisory committee on immunization practices

Members of the CDC’s advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP) received an email late Monday afternoon terminating their positions, said panel member Dr. Noel Brewer. This decision by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may impact vaccine access, insurance coverage, and public health.  Members of the ACIP typically serve four-year terms.…

By Julia Rock-Torcivia | June 10, 2025

FDA approved ENFLONSIA for the prevention of RSV in Infants

Merck announced yesterday that the FDA has approved ENFLONSIA (clesrovimab-cfor), a preventive monoclonal antibody, for the prevention of RSV lower respiratory tract disease in newborns and infants entering their first RSV season.  ENFLONSIA is the only RSV preventative option that is administered with the same 105 mg dose regardless of the patient’s weight. It is…

By Drug Discovery Editor | June 10, 2025

The 2025 Drug Discovery & Development Pharma 50 Report: Deep Dives

Oncology tops $84B, Mounjaro surges 124%: Your guide to the 2025 pharma landscape. FY2024 reset the competitive landscape in pharma. While oncology held its top sales standing, the rapid ascent of GLP-1s, market erosion from Humira biosimilars, and the advance of new modalities revised the new biopharma hierarchy. This deep-dive report builds on the Pharma…

By Julia Rock-Torcivia | June 9, 2025

Sanofi ramps up distribution of Beyfortus ahead of RSV season

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) already represents a blockbuster business with Sanofi reporting that Beyfortus (nirsevimab) hit global sales of €1.7 billion (roughly $1.77 billion) in its first full year on the market in 2024. Beyfortus protects infants from lung infections caused by RSV Beyfortus can help prevent a serious lung disease associated with RSV in…

By Julia Rock-Torcivia | June 9, 2025

First clinical study results of Dupixent for atopic dermatitis in patients with darker skin tones 

Just over three-quarters, 76%, of patients receiving Sanofi and Regeneron’s Dupixent (dupilumab) achieved at least a 75% improvement in overall disease severity (EASI-75), the primary endpoint of the DISCOVER Phase 4 study.   The study, presented at the Revolutionizing Atopic Dermatitis Conference in Nashville, focused on patients with moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis with skin of color.  Unmet…

By Brian Buntz | June 5, 2025

Insilico’s AI-designed rentosertib shows promise in first phase 2a trial results

Insilico Medicine

An AI-designed drug, rentosertib, from Insilico Medicine improved lung function by 98.4 mL in a 71-patient idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis study published June 3 in Nature Medicine, marking what may be the first peer-reviewed phase 2a result for a molecule generated, with its target discovered, entirely by generative AI. In an email, Insilico CEO Alex Zhavoronkov,…

By Brian Buntz | June 3, 2025

Why FDA’s Elsa AI tool was inevitable (and just the beginning)

Every month, thousands of drug-promo packages, ranging from TV spots to banner ads and updated labels, land in the FDA’s queue for 2253 review. The agency tracks “the number of required submissions of promotional communications to FDA on Form 2253 and the total number of submitted materials, as a submission may contain more than one…

By Brian Buntz | May 30, 2025

Labcorp widens precision oncology toolkit, aims to speed drug-trial enrollment

Labcorp says it can now move tumor slides at internet speed instead of parcel speed. The diagnostics giant today rolled out a Leica-scanner–based digital-pathology network across its central labs and paired it with new next-generation-sequencing panels and homologous-recombination-deficiency (HRD) testing, a package the company claims will dramatically accelerate biomarker screening for oncology studies, with the potential to significantly…

By Brian Buntz | May 27, 2025

Human study tracks brain’s glymphatic flow in real time, opening Alzheimer’s drug avenues

Applied Cognition, a clinical-stage platform therapeutic company, and academic partners have published the first continuous, non-invasive measurements of the human glymphatic system in Nature Biomedical Engineering. The glymphatic system is a brain-wide waste-clearance network that removes toxic proteins including amyloid-β and tau during sleep. Dysfunction of the system is implicated in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative…

By Brian Buntz | May 27, 2025

Xaira and Verily co-founder ponders low-hanging fruit and blue-sky potential in FDA’s genAI rollout

The FDA is betting big on genAI to transform tedious workflows, setting a June 30 deadline for agency-wide deployment. While details of its plans are scarce at present, using genAI to reduce FDA’s paperwork burden seems inevitable. The broader goal doesn’t qualify as “a high-order AI problem today,” said Vik Bajaj, founder and CEO of…

By Brian Buntz | May 23, 2025

Sanofi opens $130M corporate hub in New Jersey as part of $20B U.S. investment push

Sanofi in the Drug Discovery & Development Pharma 50

Sanofi has officially opened its new $130 million flagship corporate offices in Morristown, New Jersey. The move consolidates nearly 2,000 employees in a 260,000-square-foot facility designed to accelerate the company’s commercial operations and strategic decision-making in its largest market. The facility replaces Sanofi’s older Bridgewater operations about 19 miles away. The opening of the new…

By Brian Buntz | May 22, 2025

GSK’s Nucala wins U.S. nod as first IL-5 biologic for COPD

GSK

The FDA on May 22 cleared GSK’s interleukin-5 antibody Nucala (mepolizumab) as an add-on to inhaled triple therapy for adults whose chronic obstructive pulmonary disease keeps flaring despite treatment and whose blood-eosinophil count starts at 150 cells/µL. The approval is on the basis of the MATINEE and METREX phase 3 trials. The MATINEE study, which…

By Brian Buntz | May 21, 2025

Capgemini’s life-sciences lead says ROI and data security, not algorithms, will decide pharma’s AI future

Pharma executives, observing peers in retail and banking tout GenAI payoffs “in weeks and months,” increasingly ask why their own firms can’t match that pace. This pressure for a ROI for an industry that has seen productivity gradually stall since the 1950s. So, when pharma executives ask Sheetal Chawla, Capgemini’s head of life sciences: “When…

By Brian Buntz | May 20, 2025

As FDA pushes agency-wide generative AI, pharma experience show similar tools can cut clinical study-report drafting time by 30% or more

Portrait of happy smiling mature middle aged professional business woman investor manager executive or lawyer attorney looking at camera at workplace working on laptop computer in office.

Jinzhong (Jin) Liu, a deputy director within FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), recently had a “game-changer” experience. New generative AI tools enabled him to “perform scientific review tasks in minutes that used to take three days,” he quipped in an announcement. This success wasn’t isolated; FDA Commissioner Martin A. Makary, “blown away”…

By Brian Buntz | May 20, 2025

FDA COVID booster pullback jolts vaccine stocks before gains cool

covid-19 vaccine

The FDA is scaling back COVID-19 booster approvals to high-risk groups. New rules demand randomized trials for healthy under-65s while preserving annual shots for seniors and people with chronic conditions. Dr. Vinay Prasad, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), and FDA Commissioner Dr. Martin A. Makary, called for a more evidenced-based…

By Brian Buntz | May 19, 2025

Austrian researchers find IgA-tagged vesicles turn gut’s own antibodies against it, worsening ulcerative colitis

Understanding the foundations of ulcerative colitis, a condition affection millions worldwide, has proven elusive. Now, researchers at the Medical University of Graz and the University of Graz have shed light on the role of gut bacteria and their antibody-coated vesicles (extracellular sacs) in spiking the chronic inflammation in the colon linked to the condition. Analyzing…

By Chris Lowden | May 19, 2025

From data to drug candidates: Optimizing informatics for ML and GenAI

Machine learning (ML) has become a cornerstone of modern drug discovery. Today, many companies are taking ML developments a step further using generative AI (GenAI) to search for molecules under specific constraints, such as solubility and patent status, and to optimize for desired properties like potential therapeutic success. In doing so, GenAI can enhance the efficiency, speed…

By Brian Buntz | May 18, 2025

How Thermo Fisher’s KingFisher PlasmidPro crunches hours of plasmid prep to 5 minutes hands-on

Five minutes of hands-on bench time now separates researchers from purified plasmid DNA using a new automated system from Thermo Fisher Scientific. The company’s cartridge-based KingFisher PlasmidPro automates the traditionally hours-long maxi-prep process. The KingFisher PlasmidPro benchtop instrument offers walk-away operation. Kevin Lowitz, vice president and general manager for sample prep at Thermo Fisher Scientific,…

By Brian Buntz | May 12, 2025

Trump slams ‘global free ride’ on drug pricing in executive order, orders match to lowest global prices

Branding U.S. drug pricing an “egregious imbalance” in which a nation with “less than five percent of the world’s population … funds around three‑quarters of global pharmaceutical profits,” President Donald Trump on 12 May signed the Delivering Most-Favored-Nation Prescription Drug Pricing to American Patients order. The executive order describes the current dynamic as one in…

By Brian Buntz | May 12, 2025

Intrepid Labs raises $7 million to expand AI-driven formulation platform

Intrepid Labs

Toronto-based Intrepid Labs, which we profiled a year ago, has closed an Avant Bio-backed $7 million seed round, bringing its total financing to over $11 million. The company’s Valiant platform is an autonomous lab technology that pairs machine-learning algorithms with robotics to potentially explore up to 1 billion possible formulations. It aims to cut drug-product design…

By Brian Buntz | May 9, 2025

FDA’s genAI push could save CDER hundreds of thousands of review hours annually

Determined to slash bureaucratic drag on drug approvals, FDA chief Dr. Martin Makary is ordering every center to plug generative-AI tools into its review pipeline by June 30, an agency-wide gamble that, he says, will turn days of paperwork into minutes of analysis. Multiple independent studies, including from McKinsey, Bain, Capgemini, the Federal Bar Association,…

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