As drug developers and regulators alike increasingly warm to creative ideas for running clinical trials, a machine learning platform created by three physicists is drawing in $50 million from tech VCs.

Unlearn bills itself as the only company that can generate “digital twins” of patients for use in clinical trials, so that biopharma companies can test their drugs with fewer real patients than they would need to in traditional trials, but get similarly, if not even more, reliable results.

Fujifilm is expanding its footprint within the US yet again, this time with another East Coast acquisition within driving distance of its new $2 billion headquarters.

Fujifilm Irvine Scientific has acquired recombinant protein maker Shenandoah Biotechnology. The Pennsylvania manufacturer makes cytokines and growth factors and recently launched a CTG grade line that was made in its new facility. This acquisition will allow Fujifilm to easily transition between preclinical and clinical phases of trials.

A Florida man who falsified medical records in connection to clinical trials was sentenced to 30 months in prison in federal court Thursday.

Daniel Tejeda, 35, of Clewiston, was also ordered to pay $2.1 million in restitution. Tejeda was a project manager and study manager for the CRO Tellus Clinical Research, and made it appear that subjects were participating in trials when they weren’t. Two other research workers from Florida were sentenced in the same case in August for 46 and 30 months, respectively.

The co-owner of a Florida-based clinical research site pleaded guilty to lying to an FDA investigator during a 2017 inspection, revealing that she falsely portrayed part of a GlaxoSmithKline pediatric asthma study as legitimate, when in fact she knew that certain data had been falsified, the Department of Justice said Wednesday.

Three other employees — Yvelice Villaman Bencosme, Lisett Raventos and Maytee Lledo — previously pleaded guilty and were sentenced in connection with falsifying data associated with the trial at the CRO Unlimited Medical Research.

Welcome to CPhI week!

Tuesday marked the opening of this year’s CPhI Global conference in Milan, Italy, in what marks its return to an onsite event for the first time since 2019.

In many ways, this year’s CPhI is different for us here at Endpoints News. We aren’t on site — as we certainly plan to be next year — so we can’t give you the inside scoop you can expect in the future. However, our team has been closely following the biggest trends from the past year and are staying abreast of what CPhI’s stable of experts are saying about the future of the industry.

Following a summer filled with mergers and acquisitions, Charles River Laboratories has divested its research operations in Japan and a CDMO site in Sweden, engineering two separate deals expected to cut down $20 million in revenue.

Tuesday, Charles River sold its gene therapy CDMO site to a private investor group for about $52 million in cash, with the potential for contingent payments up to $25 million. The site was in the company’s possession for only a few months, as it was acquired from Cognate BioServices on March 29.