23andMe files for bankruptcy as CEO Anne Wojcicki resigns

From my colleague Jason Mast: 23andMe defined an era of genetics, promising to give consumers ancestry and health insights. But late yesterday, the financially troubled company filed for voluntary bankruptcy and said it will try to find a buyer through a court-supervised sale.

Founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki resigned as part of the process. In a statement posted to LinkedIn, Wojcickly said she plans to continue attempting to purchase 23andMe.

The Chapter 11 bankruptcy signals a humbling end for a startup and a CEO that defined an era of genetics, when new cheap sequencing tools promised to allow individuals to both unwind the secrets of their ancestry and provide personalized health insights to stave off disease.

RESEARCH

Cancer research faces unprecedented funding crisis

Budget cuts and research delays are threatening to reverse progress on what has long been a bipartisan cause in Washington: Cancer research.

The threat has appeared on multiple fronts. NCI-designated cancer centers across the country are facing the prospect of reduced funding from the federal government due to the Trump administration's bid to cut indirect cost payments. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers are applying their own pressure. In one notable example, major cuts to the Defense Department's Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs have slashed cancer research funding by 57%, eliminating support in key areas like pancreatic, kidney, lung, and brain cancers, STAT's Angus Chen reports.

The cuts come at a time when cancer treatments and technologies are accelerating, raising fears that promising breakthroughs could be stalled or lost entirely.

"No money for kidney cancer," Mark Vieth, who coordinates the Defense Health Research Consortium, which advocates for the CDMRP, told STAT. "No money for pancreatic cancer. No money for lung cancer. It leaves so much completely unfunded. Yeah, wow. It's pretty devastating."

funding

Can philanthropy rescue struggling small biotechs?

Small biotech startups drive most drug innovation in the U.S., but they're getting squeezed by the drug industry's anti-competitive tactics and a patent system that rewards monopolies over breakthroughs, opine Boston University policy analyst Brian Stanley and Michael Nguyen-Maso, a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in Harvard's Health Policy and Economics Program.

Government fixes are slow and uncertain, they write, leaving scrappy investors with few lifelines — and a rising tide of bankruptcies.

Philanthropies, especially from venture-minded or justice-driven donors, could step in where policy has stalled. By funding high-risk, high-impact research and covering clinical trial costs for socially valuable therapies, the pair write, foundations can tilt the scales back toward innovation.

"Taking steps to align private profit incentives with public health is essential for market innovation and biotech growth in the future, and philanthropy has a critical chance to step up where policy is failing," they say.

china

AstraZeneca's $2.5 billion R&D investment in China

Despite facing potential fines from Chinese regulators over unpaid import duties, AstraZeneca just announced a $2.5 billion investment to build a major R&D center in Beijing — its second in China. CEO Pascal Soirot suggested that the move isn't an attempt at damage control, but part of a long-term strategy to tap into China's growing biotech and AI ecosystem — even as trade tensions and Trump-era tariffs pressure European firms to keep roots in the U.S.

"Companies like ours, the size of our company, means that we will face headwinds from time to time, and challenges and issues, and of course we regret having to go through a challenging period like this, but it is not related at all to our investment in Beijing, the two are totally separate," Soriot told CNBC. "This project started in our minds much earlier than the recent challenges we are facing."

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