Esperion’s CLEAR Outcomes trial does not have a clear outcome regarding partner Daiichi Sankyo ponying up the big biobucks.

Esperion’s heart pill, which has struggled to gain traction, was due for up to $440 million in milestones from Daiichi following a data readout earlier this month aiming to expand the EU and US labels.

But the Michigan biotech’s partner appears to disagree on which data would trigger the payments. Esperion outlined the mismatched views in an SEC filing Wednesday afternoon, and investors sent the company’s stock $ESPR on a rapid 54% decline in after-hours trading.

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Cancer biotech Jounce Therapeutics has gotten a hostile takeover bid from Concentra Biosciences, a San Diego company backed by Tang Capital Partners.

Tang Capital is also a shareholder in Jounce, owning just over 10% of its shares, which according to SEC documents were all purchased in the last two months. But Jounce already has a merger agreement with Redx Pharma that it announced in February and was expected to complete in the second quarter of this year. Through that merger, Redx was planning to jump on the Nasdaq.

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Exscientia said it expanded its pipeline Tuesday morning, but the biotech is doing so without the help of a yearslong partner: Bristol Myers Squibb.

The Big Pharma has decided not to move forward with two oncology development candidates, Exscientia said. The AI-driven UK biotech plans to start testing the compounds in the clinic next year on its own, CEO Andrew Hopkins told Endpoints News.

“We took this as part of a routine portfolio prioritization happening in BMS and other Big Pharma at the moment,” Hopkins said.

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Pfizer will buy cancer drugmaker Seagen for $43 billion in one of the industry’s biggest deals in years.

The deal, for $229 a share, ends a long-running drama. Pfizer appears to have won by being willing to pay up: In July, Merck was reported to be in talks for a deal at or over $40 billion that fell apart over price. In February, Pfizer was reportedly in talks with Seagen for more than $30 billion.

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Worries about the future of SVB Financial Group, the parent company of Silicon Valley Bank, rippled through the startup sector on Friday.

The bank is a major financial services provider to healthcare and technology startups, and holds billions of dollars worth of deposits for the industry, including for many early-stage, private companies. There were reports Thursday and Friday that venture capitalists and startups were pulling money from the bank after it said it was raising funds to cover a loss, sparking fears of a broader run on the bank.

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Gary Nabel, Anthony Fauci and other NIH leaders called for a vaccine to prevent Epstein-Barr virus-associated cancers in 2011. Nabel went on to lead scientific operations at Sanofi, where he worked with former NIH director Elias Zerhouni on programs that included early research on an EBV vaccine.

After leaving the French Big Pharma, they formed a new biotech, ModeX Therapeutics, and in-licensed the Sanofi intellectual property on their EBV work. Now, they’re teaming up with Merck to bring the vaccine candidate into the clinic next year for infectious mononucleosis (commonly referred to as mono), Nabel tells Endpoints News.

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