→ The Pfiz­er vets at Con­flu­ence Life Sci­ences have agreed to be bought out by Aclaris $ACRS in a deal that comes with $20 mil­lion in cash and stock. The biotech’s lead prod­uct in­clude CDD-450, a nov­el MK-2 path­way in­hibitor, top­i­cal Janus ki­nase in­hibitors, and IL2-in­ducible T-cell ki­nase in­hibitor pro­grams.

→ Pfiz­er is pump­ing $100 mil­lion in­to its op­er­a­tions in San­ford, NC as it ex­pands man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty for gene ther­a­pies. The move will add 40 jobs at the cam­pus. Pfiz­er bought out Chapel Hill-based Bam­boo last year in a $700 mil­lion deal as it ramped up its fo­cus on gene ther­a­pies.

→ There’s more bad news for Juno Ther­a­peu­tics. An­oth­er law firm is tak­ing aim at Juno in a class ac­tion suit, say­ing its fail­ure to dis­close deaths of pa­tients in its no­to­ri­ous mid-stage study of JCAR015 had left in­vestors ex­posed.

The sign is still there, a quaint reminder of whitewashed concrete not 5 miles from Genentech’s sprawling, chrome-and-glass campus: South Francisco The Industrial City. 

The city keeps the old sign, first erected in 1923, as a tourist site and a kind of civic memento to the days it packed meat, milled lumber and burned enough steel to earn the moniker “Smokestack of the Peninsula.” But the real indication of where you are and how much has changed both in San Francisco and in the global economy since a couple researchers and investors rented out an empty warehouse 40 years ago comes in a far smaller blue sign, resembling a Rotary Club post, off the highway: South San Francisco, The Birthplace of Biotech.

Novo Nordisk’s priority review voucher on oral semaglutide has paid off. The FDA approval for the GLP-1 drug hit late Friday morning, around six months after the NDA filing.

Rybelsus will be the first GLP-1 pill to enter the type 2 diabetes market — a compelling offering that analysts have pegged as a blockbuster drug with sales estimates ranging from $2 billion to $5 billion.

Ozempic, the once-weekly injectable formulation of semaglutide, brought in around $552 million (DKK 3.75 billion) in the first half of 2019.

There are two updates on the lawsuit against Purdue Pharma over its role in fueling the opioid epidemic, as the Sackler family threatens to walk away from their pledge to pay out $3 billion if a bankruptcy judge does not stop outstanding state lawsuits against them. At the same time, the company has asked permission to pay millions in bonuses to select employees.

Purdue filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy this week as part of its signed resolution to over 2,000 lawsuits. The deal would see the Sackler family that owns Purdue give $3 billion from their personal wealth and the company turned into a trust committed to curbing and reversing overdoses.

While Novartis painstakingly works to mop up the stench of the data manipulation scandal associated with its expensive gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) Zolgensma— rival Biogen is attempting to expand the use of its SMA therapy, Spinraza. 

The US drugmaker $BIIB secured US approval for Spinraza for use in the often fatal genetic disease in 2016. The approval covered a broad range of patients with infantile-onset (most likely to develop Type 1) SMA.