Af­ter be­ing ac­quired by Paci­ra Bio­sciences in a $450 mil­lion deal, it looks like Flex­ion Ther­a­peu­tics qui­et­ly brought out the axe.

While de­tails re­main few and short, here’s what we know: The com­pa­ny re­port­ed a lay­off to Mass­a­chu­setts as part of the state’s Work­er Ad­just­ment and Re­tain­ing Act (WARN) — some­thing com­pa­nies are oblig­ed to do when there are im­pend­ing lay­offs — and list­ed in last week’s re­port. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, 110 em­ploy­ees had been shown the door. The com­pa­ny list­ed the lay­off date as Jan. 18 with no cor­po­rate an­nounce­ment.

WARN orig­i­nal­ly re­ceived no­tice Flex­ion would let em­ploy­ees go on Nov. 22, on­ly a month or so af­ter Paci­ra’s ac­qui­si­tion of the biotech was an­nounced.

The biotech, which once drew at­ten­tion for its lead non-opi­oid painkiller Zil­ret­ta for knee pain, got bought out in a steep dis­count last year — brought down from a po­ten­tial 10-fig­ure buy­out to $450 mil­lion at $8.50 a share.

Paci­ra did not re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment.

Flex­ion wasn’t the on­ly biotech list­ed in that WARN re­port, ei­ther — can­cer-fo­cused bio­phar­ma De­ci­pher Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals re­port­ed a lay­off as well, giv­ing the prover­bial pink slip to 116 of their em­ploy­ees on Jan. 29.

De­ci­pher said at the time that the re­struc­tur­ing would lay off 140 em­ploy­ees to help keep Deciper go­ing through 2024.

Bio­gen has al­so be­gun lay­ing off em­ploy­ees this week. Ac­cord­ing to a se­nior of­fi­cial with­in Bio­gen, more than 100 peo­ple have been laid off so far.

Eli Lilly has succeeded in its attempt to get the first non-covalent version of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase, or BTK, inhibitors to market, pushing it past rival Merck.

The FDA gave an accelerated nod to Lilly’s daily oral med, to be sold as Jaypirca, for patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma.

The agency’s green light, disclosed by the Indianapolis Big Pharma on Friday afternoon, catapults Lilly into a field dominated by covalent BTK inhibitors, which includes AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson’s Imbruvica, AstraZeneca’s Calquence and BeiGene’s Brukinsa.

Novartis’ sickle cell drug, approved in 2019 and branded as Adakveo, has failed an ongoing Phase III, according to preliminary results.

The Swiss pharma giant unveiled early data from the ongoing STAND Phase III study on Friday, saying that crizanlizumab showed no statistically significant difference between the drug at two different dose levels compared to placebo in annualized rates of vaso-occlusive crises that lead to a healthcare visit over the first year since being randomized into the trial.

Merck’s blockbuster cancer treatment Keytruda has been handed another indication by the FDA.

The US regulator announced on Thursday that it has approved Keytruda to serve as an adjuvant treatment for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which is its fifth indication in NSCLC and 34th indication overall.

According to a Merck release, the approval is based on data from a Phase III trial, dubbed Keynote-091, which measured disease-free survival in patients who received chemotherapy following surgery. The data from Merck displayed that Keytruda cut down on the risk of disease recurrence or death by 27% versus placebo.

J&J and Legend Biotech’s next step in turning their CAR-T therapy Carvykti into a potential megablockbuster has succeeded, the companies said Friday.

Carvykti achieved the primary endpoint — progression-free survival — in an open-label Phase III study testing the treatment in second- to fourth-line multiple myeloma patients. The CARTITUDE-4 trial, for which there aren’t any hard data yet, represents the biggest development for Carvykti’s ability to compete with Bristol Myers Squibb’s Abecma since its approval last February.