May 13, 2025

The need-to-know this morning

UnitedHealth Group said its CEO, Andrew Witty, has stepped down, and former chief executive Stephen Hemsley will be the company's new leader.
Cytokinetics said a Phase 3 trial testing its investigational therapy aficamten against a commonly used beta blocker in patients with obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy met its primary endpoint.
iTeos and GSK are ending the development of an anti-TIGIT antibody, after interim results from a Phase 2 lung cancer trial did not show clinically meaningful improvements. The news adds another mark against TIGIT as a solid target for next-generation cancer drugs.

venture

RA Capital lays off staff as VCs face financial strain

Biotech investment firm RA Capital has laid off staff at its internal startup incubator, my colleague Allison DeAngelis reports.

In recent months, RA Capital has asked all of its companies to rethink their plans, on the assumption that cash will be harder to come by. As a result, the incubuator, called RA Ventures, or Raven, has reduced its administrative staff and support services, while also cutting a team working on artificial intelligence and machine learning tools, sources said.

At the same time, RA Capital has injected more money into Raven and is planning a push into the Chinese biotech industry.

The moves highlight the instability that biotech and venture firms face in the U.S. amid a prolonged investment downturn, as well as growing interest by investors to look to China for new biotech assets.

Read more from STAT's Allison DeAngelis.

politics

Trying to make sense of Trump's drug pricing plan

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Yesterday, the drug industry and experts scrambled to try to understand President Trump's new executive order that aims to lower drug prices paid by the U.S. to the levels that other countries pay. But the order was scant on details, and it's unclear if it would stand up to legal and political challenges.

My colleagues Daniel Payne and Ed Silverman compiled a list of the key questions surrounding the proposal. For example, what legal authority does the administration have to lower prices? And how will it settle on a target price for each medication? Read more.

Perhaps as a reflection of how unlikely investors think this policy would actually be implemented, biopharma stocks rose yesterday, with the XBI climbing 4%. In the event the policy were to be enacted, it may even be beneficial for smaller biotech companies, one analyst said, since pharma companies would have more reason to acquire biotechs to build up their pipelines. Read more.

biotech

Galapagos changes its mind on its big shakeup

From my colleague Drew Joseph: In January, the struggling Belgian biotech Galapagos NV announced it would be splitting into two companies, with the future Galapagos continuing to focus on cancer cell therapies, and the new firm, temporarily dubbed SpinCo, set to build up a pipeline through transactions.

Today, the company walked that plan back.

Citing "regulatory and market developments," the company said its board had "decided to re-evaluate" the split. Galapagos also suggested it might be willing to give up its cancer cell therapy work, saying that the board would "explore all strategic alternatives for its existing businesses, including cell therapy, with a focus on maximizing resources available for transformative business development transactions." The company's focus has been on developing CAR-Ts that in theory could offer manufacturing advantages over other companies' products.

The company had also said last month that Paul Stoffels, a pharma legend who took on the CEO role in 2022 in a bid to resurrect Galapagos, would retire in the next year. Today, the company said that Henry Gosebruch, who had been tapped to lead SpinCo, was succeeding Stoffels as Galapagos CEO, effective immediately.

science

The courtroom fight over CRISPR isn't over yet

A federal court yesterday reopened the question of who owns key CRISPR patents, extending a now 13-year-long legal saga over who invented the technology.

An appeals court sided with the University of California and the University of Vienna in their bid to revive a fight over foundational CRISPR-Cas9 patents that the schools say should go to their Nobel Prize-winning scientists Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier — instead of a group of scientists led by Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The ruling does not invalidate the Broad's patents, which stand for now, but it does send the case back to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's appeal board.

liquid biopsy

Will there soon be a Theranos 2.0?

Elizabeth Holmes is serving an 11-year prison sentence for misleading investors with Theranos. But it appears her partner, Billy Evans, is trying to revive her dream of a diagnostic testing revolution.

Evans has formed a new company, called Haemanthus, that also aims to use blood testing to detect a wide array of health conditions. The news triggered a mix of shock, anger, and rueful skepticism.

"I wish there were a way to short a stock before a company even exists," one academic said.

Haemanthus is still in stealth mode, and details about its underlying technology are scant, but a prototype of its device bears a striking resemblance to the boxy blood testing machines at Theranos.

Read more from STAT's Casey Ross and Jonathan Wosen.

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