→  The COPD drug mar­ket is ex­pect­ed to grow dra­mat­i­cal­ly over the next decade, hit­ting $14.1 bil­lion by 2025, ac­cord­ing to Glob­al­Da­ta.  It was $9.9 bil­lion in 2015. The growth will be fu­eled by in­creased di­ag­noses as well as new bron­chodila­tor drug class­es and an­ti-eosinophilic bi­o­log­ics.

→  Valeant is sell­ing iN­o­va for $930 mil­lion. The com­pa­ny is sell­ing off as­sets in an at­tempt to re­duce large piles of debt ac­quired un­der pre­vi­ous CEO Mike Pear­son as he went on a deal-mak­ing spree. Pear­son was re­placed by Joseph Pa­pa last year.

→  CytRx an­nounced it plans to sub­mit a rolling NDA un­der sec­tion 505(b)(2) New Drug Ap­pli­ca­tion (NDA) for al­dox­oru­bicin, which has re­ceived or­phan drug des­ig­na­tion, in soft tis­sue sar­co­mas (STS). The drug flopped in 2016.

→  Ex­act Sci­ences Cor­po­ra­tion $EXAS is sell­ing 7m shares of com­mon stock at a pub­lic of­fer­ing price of $35 per share. It’s ex­pect­ed to close June 12.

Hal Barron has his second positive round of Phase III data in hand for his anti-BCMA antibody drug conjugate belantamab mafodotin (GSK2857916). And GSK’s research chief says the data paves the way for their drive in search of an FDA approval for treating multiple myeloma. 

It’s hard to overestimate the importance of this drug for GSK, a cornerstone of Barron’s campaign to make a dramatic impact on the oncology market and provide some long-lost excitement for the pharma giant’s pipeline. They’re putting this BCMA program at the front of that charge — looking to lead a host of rivals all aimed at the same target.

During BIO this year, I had a chance to moderate a panel among some of the top tech experts in biopharma on their real-world use of artificial intelligence in R&D. There’s been a lot said about the potential of AI, but I wanted to explore more about what some of the larger players are actually doing with this technology today, and how they see it advancing in the future. It was a fascinating exchange, which you can see here. The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity. — John Carroll

Novartis $NVS may have given up, but Amgen $AMGN and Allergan $AGN are plowing ahead with their knockoff of Roche’s blockbuster biologic Rituxan in the United States.

Their copycat, ABP 798, was found to have a clinically equivalent impact as Rituxan — meeting the main goal of the study involving CD20-positive B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma patients. This is the second trial supporting the profile of the biosimilar. In January, it came through with positive PK results in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.