A Belgian startup backed by former Johnson and Johnson research chief Paul Stoffels has taken on Galapagos’s cell therapy research, BioPharma Dive reported, reviving a CAR-T programme the Belgian group had wound down; the move returns one of Europe’s best known biotech research engines to independent hands. Endpoints News tallied about 1.6 billion dollars of deals in a single day across the sector, a tape that includes the Galderma acquisition of ZO Skin Health, covered in full in today’s infra deals edition, and a 439 million dollar Vista Equity acquisition in health technology.
In Washington, three former FDA commissioners, Robert Califf, Scott Gottlieb and Ned Sharpless, publicly criticised the current health department leadership, STAT reported, an intervention with few precedents from officials who usually defend the agency’s institutional standing regardless of party. The Trump administration advanced its plan for peptide drugs favoured by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., STAT also reported. Endpoints reported that Virginia is leading US states in winning pharmaceutical investment as drugmakers onshore production, the state level scoreboard of the reshoring wave. Separately, a CDC web page supporting COVID vaccination in pregnancy went dark, Endpoints reported, the latest change in federal vaccine communication.