Hello, my fellow zombie hunters,
It’s been a ghoulish week in the world of biotech: Novartis takes a horrifying $1.9B hit on a phase 3 flop, Artiva axes 94% of its workforce following patient safety concerns, Ferring conjures up a deal that could slash IVF hormone injections, a creature from the deep takes on brain-eating amoebas, and vaccines targeting skin-bacteria proteins could exorcise acne.
Don’t get too spooked!
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🪦 Novartis CEO keeps faith in Avidity deal despite taking $1.9B hit from del-desiran fail (Fierce Biotech): Novartis is defending its $12B acquisition of Avidity Biosciences after del-desiran, the centrepiece of the deal, failed a pivotal phase 3 trial in myotonic dystrophy type 1, triggering a $1.9B partial impairment charge. It is the latest in a string of blows for Novartis, following disappointing phase 3 results for cardiovascular drug pelacarsen and safety concerns that paused the company’s own CAR-T programme. Despite mounting clinical setbacks, Novartis has raised its full-year profit guidance and insists its acquisition strategy remains unchanged.
Our take: Novartis’s nearly $2B hit on del-desiran came in the same financial results in which it lifted its profit forecasts, illustrating a key structural advantage enjoyed by big pharma: diversified revenues allow it to absorb multiple expensive clinical failures. But the deal isn’t dead yet! Novartis plans another pivotal study of del-desiran, and two other Avidity drugs (del-zota and del-brax) are still in development, making it a dented bet rather than a lost one.
💀 After 2 patient deaths and cell therapy durability concerns, Artiva cuts 94% of workforce (BioSpace): Artiva Biotherapeutics is abandoning development of its lead NK cell therapy, AlloNK, following two patient deaths and concerns over the durability of clinical responses. Despite achieving substantial B-cell depletion in combination with rituximab in rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases, the treatment failed to deliver sufficiently sustained clinical responses. The decision ends plans for a pivotal phase 3 trial and will see the company cut the majority of its workforce.
Our take: Artiva’s setback raises a deeper scientific question about whether removing B cells can reliably reset the immune system or whether the underlying autoimmune processes eventually re-establish themselves. As developers pursue increasingly sophisticated cell therapies for autoimmune diseases, the gap between profound immune-cell depletion and delivering sustained disease remission could become critical.
😈 Ferring to buy fertility biotech Gameto for up to $1.38 billion (European Biotechnology Magazine): The deal would give the Swiss pharma group a stem cell-based technology that could reduce the hormone injections required for IVF and egg freezing. Gameto’s Fertilo platform uses engineered ovarian support cells to mature eggs outside the body, meaning hormonal stimulation could last between one and three days instead of around two weeks. The technology is undergoing phase 3 testing in the US.
Our take: Ferring’s acquisition of Gameto presents an unusual strategic contradiction. The company already sells fertility hormones, including Menopur, yet Fertilo is designed to dramatically reduce the need for precisely those treatments. This could represent a deliberate attempt to control the transition away from hormone-intensive IVF before a competitor disrupts its existing business. Better the devil you own than the devil you don’t!
🧟 Marine molecule may help combat “brain-eating” amoeba (UC San Diego Today): A compound isolated from marine bacteria could offer a new weapon against one of the world’s deadliest infections. Researchers at UC San Diego have shown that rutamycin B can kill Naegleria fowleri, the brain-eating monster amoeba behind primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), a disease with a fatality rate exceeding 97%. The compound works four times faster than the current standard treatment and is significantly more selective for the parasite than human cells. (Read the Marine Drugs paper)
Our take: PAM destroys brain tissue so fast that patients typically die around five days after symptoms appear, so a drug that works in four hours (vs 16) could buy crucial time. However, rutamycin B has only been tested on amoebae in a dish, and nobody yet knows whether it can cross the blood–brain barrier to reach the infection. Its most promising role may in fact be as a partner to amphotericin B, the standard PAM treatment, whose use is limited by kidney toxicity; pairing the two drugs cut its dose by up to 60 times.
And finally…
🧛 Vaccines could be about to revolutionise acne treatments (New Scientist): Acne may be caused not by skin bacteria themselves, but by the immune system overreacting to proteins they release. Sanofi and US biotech Armora Biosciences are separately developing acne vaccines based on this hypothesis, targeting proteins from Cutibacterium acnes, the most common bacterium on human skin. The vaccines aim to neutralise specific inflammatory triggers while preserving beneficial skin microbes. Early animal studies have shown promising results.
Our take: The finding that acne-linked and healthy-skin strains of C. acnes produce different forms of hyaluronidase suggests that acne may not be a single biological condition, but a collection of inflammatory responses driven by different bacterial populations. This could create an opportunity for precision dermatology, where patients are selected for specific treatments based on the genetic and functional characteristics of their skin microbiome.
Tune in 🎧
💪 GLP-1 muscle loss: the next battleground in obesity treatment (Part 2 of 3): Atrogi’s CEO discusses the limitations of existing GLP-1 therapies, the science behind the company’s experimental drug ATR-258, and how smaller biotechs can stand up to the pharma giants in the fast-moving metabolic disease market.
🖨️ Bioprinting 3D human tissue to discover and test new treatments with Viscient Bio’s Keith Murphy: This episode explores how scaffold-free bioprinting and human tissue models could improve drug safety predictions, advance disease modelling and reduce reliance on animal testing. No Frankenstein required!
⚠️ Capitol gains: Confronting biotech’s policy risks: Incubate’s founder unpacks what’s keeping biotech investors up at night, from FDA leadership instability and drug-pricing policies to declining federal research funding and China’s growing biotech sector.
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