After surprising Wall Street with positive data on its drug, omaveloxolone, in patients suffering from a notoriously hard-to-treat degenerative neuromuscular disorder last month, Reata Pharma on Monday unveiled pivotal results from a trial testing another drug, bardoxolone, in patients with a rare, genetic form of chronic kidney disease for which there exist no approved therapies.

Bardoxolone, like Reata’s other lead drug — omaveloxolone — is a small molecule engineered to bind to a gene called Keap1 to enhance the activity of the protein Nrf2 in order to defuse inflammation.

When ARCH Venture Partners helped launch Hua Medicine with former Roche exec Li Chen, it marked one of the first bets on a Chinese biotech to deliver a world-class diabetes drug. Eight years later, their lead drug appears to have turned the corner and entered the final stretch.

Late on Monday night Shanghai time — where it’s based — Hua unveiled positive data from the first part of its pivotal study of dorzagliatin, celebrating a win on the primary endpoint as well as decent safety results.

Ahead of the pivotal data readout of MyoKardia’s lead drug, mavacamten, in patients with obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), investors took issue with the drug’s safety profile in a separate Phase II non-obstructive HCM study.

Mavacamten is expected to break new ground in heart disease — a field monopolized by large pharmaceutical companies largely due to the long, arduous and expensive trials that are commonplace in heart drug development. Unlike other developers focusing on common heart disorders, MyoKardia’s treatment is also targeting a so-far untapped disease — hypertrophic cardiomyopathy — a genetic condition in which heart muscle thickens, making it harder for the organ to pump blood to the rest of the body.

Its frontline and single-agent aspirations have been set back, but Bristol-Myers Squibb just took a big step forward in its efforts to apply its checkpoint inhibitor Opdivo to liver cancer. The FDA has granted breakthrough status and priority review to a combination, second-line treatment.

The designation is for Opdivo (nivolumab) in combination with Yervoy (ipilimumab),  for treating advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common form of liver cancer. The PD-L1 drug was already approved as a single-agent, second-line treatment for HCC. A PDUFA date was set for March 10, 2020 — just 4 months from now.

Lipocine’s latest attempt at securing approval for its oral testosterone drug has fizzled yet again.

The Utah-based drug developer on Monday said the FDA has spurned its marketing application, indicating that some efficacy data on the drug, Tlando, was not up to scratch to treat male hypogonadism, a condition characterized by low production of the hormone testosterone, which is responsible for maintaining muscle bulk, bone growth, and sexual function.