The front page of AI-driven biology
Thursday, October 15, 2026Thu, Oct 15
Updated 8:01 PM PT
Clinical readouts, approvals, and setbacks, financing, dealmaking, platform progress, and reported research across biotech and biopharma, including the companies building AI into biology.
The Japanese drugmaker agreed to acquire Texas-based IntraBio in a deal valued at $2 billion by reporting outlets, absorbing an asset that generated $68 million in 2025 sales according to Shionogi.
ViiV Healthcare said its long-acting injectable combination of cabotegravir, an integrase strand transfer inhibitor, and rilpivirine, a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor, achieved superior viral suppression rates at six months compared to standard daily oral therapy.
Adding Epkinly, a bispecific antibody targeting CD3 and CD20, to standard R-CHOP chemotherapy reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 51% in patients with newly diagnosed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.
Lycia Therapeutics has filed to go public on the Nasdaq to advance its pipeline of lysosome-targeting chimeras, or LYTACs, which degrade extracellular and membrane-bound proteins.
The FDA issued a request for information to guide the design of early-phase clinical trials for ibogaine drug candidates, seeking input on dosing, safety monitoring, care settings, and stopping rules.
Roche's Genentech unit will pay Alector $100 million upfront, alongside up to $1.17 billion in potential milestones that bring the deal's total value to $1.27 billion, for exclusive global rights to AL050.
The expanded multi-year agreement adds one target, with an option for a second, to discover small molecules that stop the secretion of disease-driving proteins using Gate's Molecular Gate drug discovery engine.
CSL will pay Alentis Therapeutics $355 million upfront and up to $1.2 billion in milestones to co-develop and co-commercialize lixudebart, a monoclonal antibody targeting Claudin-1.
In the Opus-1 Phase 3 trial in adults, the company's 31-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, VAX-31, met non-inferiority criteria against all 20 bacterial strains in Pfizer's Prevnar 20 and 17 of 19 strains in Merck's Capvaxive.
Updated clinical data for EPI-321 showed a 3% increase in muscle volume at six months in patients with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, or FSHD.
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel for developing optogenetics.
In Part C of the Phase 1/2 Rainfol-01 trial of 109 patients with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer, Genmab reported a median progression-free survival of 9.5 months for its folate-receptor-alpha-targeting antibody-drug conjugate rinatabart sesutecan.
The FDA has extended its review period for Novo Nordisk's hemophilia A treatment Frehemgo while manufacturing site corrections are addressed.
The FDA cleared Eli Lilly's pirtobrutinib, an oral non-covalent BTK inhibitor branded as Jaypirca, for adults with previously untreated chronic lymphocytic leukemia or small lymphocytic lymphoma lacking a 17p deletion.
Aviceda Therapeutics is closing down after its lead eye-disease asset, the glyco-engineered nanoparticle AVD-104, failed a Phase 2b trial against Astellas' Izervay in geographic atrophy.
FDA Chief Scientist Steven Kozlowski announced that the agency will incorporate aging and longevity research into its upcoming Focus Areas of Regulatory Science report.
The FDA established a new Office of Innovation and Clinical Trial Modernization inside the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research to accelerate novel trial designs.
Summit Therapeutics has formed a clinical collaboration with AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo to evaluate ivonescimab alongside Datroway in a Phase 3 trial for first-line triple-negative breast cancer, with the companies sharing study costs.
Xaira Therapeutics unveiled X-Design, its generative artificial intelligence platform built to design drug-ready antibodies from scratch, along with two early preclinical pipeline candidates.
An FDA advisory committee has voted that the benefits of Grail's Galleri multi-cancer early detection blood test outweigh its risks, bringing the test closer to premarket approval.
Novartis agreed to pay China's Abogen Biosciences $575 million upfront, alongside up to $7.2 billion in milestones that bring the total transaction value to $7.8 billion as reported by Reuters.
Abbott has initiated the U.S. commercial launch of SimpleScreen CRC, an FDA-approved blood test developed and manufactured by Freenome for average-risk adults aged 45 and older.
Pfizer reported that its trispecific antibody tilrekimig met its primary endpoint in a Phase 2 trial, producing significant skin clearance over placebo in patients with moderate to severe atopic dermatitis.
Seattle-based Talus Bioscience has unveiled Ptarmigan-1, an AI tool designed to predict small-molecule binding sites directly across disordered and unstructured human proteins.
Eli Lilly has ended its 2021 oncology alliance with Foghorn Therapeutics after dose-escalation Phase 1 data for FHD-909 showed insufficient tumor-shrinking efficacy in non-small cell lung cancer with SMARCA4 mutations.
Bristol Myers Squibb reported that a participant in its Phase 3 Aloft program died of multi-organ failure tied to acute liver injury, though the trial remains blinded and it is unknown if the patient received the experimental pill admilparant or a placebo.
The Department of Health and Human Services has unveiled SURPASS, a five-year program run by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health to speed up clinical trials using artificial intelligence and computational modeling.
Invivyd reported that its injectable monoclonal antibody VYD2311 achieved significantly better tolerability than Pfizer's mRNA vaccine Comirnaty in the Phase 3 LIBERTY study.
Boehringer Ingelheim and Zealand Pharma reported that their dual glucagon and GLP-1 receptor agonist met co-primary endpoints in the Phase 3 Synchronize-2 trial in adults with obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
Under the expanded pact, Sanofi will pay $1 billion upfront and up to $7 billion in potential milestones to develop a new series of antibodies for immunological conditions.