Three days af­ter win­ning Japan­ese ap­proval for its acute myeloid leukemia drug quizar­tinib, Dai­ichi Sankyo is be­ing forced to en­dure an em­bar­rass­ing re­jec­tion at the hands of the FDA.

US reg­u­la­tors wast­ed no time in bat­ting back quizar­tinib af­ter first high­light­ing the messy da­ta in its ap­pli­ca­tion in an in­ter­nal re­view, that in turn per­suad­ed a large ma­jor­i­ty of out­side ex­perts to rec­om­mend a re­jec­tion for the drug, which tar­gets FLT3-ITD–pos­i­tive AML cas­es.

To lit­tle sur­prise, Ex­elix­is’ Cotel­lic — known chem­i­cal­ly as co­bime­tinib — in com­bi­na­tion with Roche’s Tecen­triq, has failed a late-stage study as a front­line treat­ment for pa­tients with a form of ad­vanced melanoma.

The Alame­da, Cal­i­for­nia-based com­pa­ny’s $EX­EL ki­nase in­hibitor — out-li­censed to Roche — was ap­proved in 2015 in com­bi­na­tion with the Swiss drug­mak­er’s Zelb­o­raf (ve­mu­rafenib) for pa­tients with BRAF V600E or V600K mu­ta­tion-pos­i­tive un­re­sectable or metasta­t­ic melanoma. Cotel­lic gen­er­at­ed rough­ly $61 mil­lion in glob­al sales last year.

Such is the state of af­fairs in an­tibi­ot­ic land that the FDA agree­ing to pri­or­i­ty re­view an ap­pli­ca­tion to ex­pand the use of an an­tibi­ot­ic can rock­et up a stock more than two-fold.

On Wednes­day, Melin­ta Ther­a­peu­tics said its ap­proved an­tibi­ot­ic Baxdela had been grant­ed pri­or­i­ty re­view for use in com­mu­ni­ty-ac­quired bac­te­r­i­al pneu­mo­nia (CAPB). The FDA is ex­pect­ed to make its de­ci­sion by Oc­to­ber 24. Shares of the Con­necti­cut drug­mak­er $ML­NT cat­a­pult­ed, clos­ing up near­ly 224% at $6.41.

Mer­ck’s re­cent deals to buy up two bolt-on biotechs — Ti­los and Pelo­ton — weren’t an aber­ra­tion. In­stead, both ac­qui­si­tions mark a new strat­e­gy to beef up its dom­i­nant can­cer drug op­er­a­tions cen­tered on Keytru­da while look­ing to ad­dress grow­ing con­cerns that too many of its eggs are in the one I/O bas­ket for their PD-1 pro­gram. And Mer­ck is go­ing af­ter more small- and mid-sized buy­outs to calm those fears.

A new study pub­lished Mon­day in BMC Med­i­cine finds that on­ly about half of the clin­i­cal tri­als re­quest­ed by the FDA as part of post­mar­ket­ing com­mit­ments for new­ly ap­proved drugs and bi­o­log­ics are pub­lished in peer-re­viewed jour­nals.

The study al­so found that in­for­ma­tion for near­ly half of the post­mar­ket­ing com­mit­ment stud­ies sub­ject to re­port­ing re­quire­ments un­der sec­tion 506B of Fed­er­al Food, Drug, and Cos­met­ic Act (FD­CA) was not up to date.

A day af­ter Pfiz­er bought Ar­ray and its ap­proved can­cer com­bo, BeiGene and Pfiz­er spin­out Spring­Works have part­nered in launch­ing a new biotech that has an eye on the very same mar­ket the phar­ma gi­ant just paid bil­lions for. And they’re plan­ning on us­ing an ex-Pfiz­er drug to do it.

In a nut­shell, Chi­na’s BeiGene is toss­ing in a pre­clin­i­cal BRAF in­hibitor — BGB-3245, which cov­ers both V600 and non-V600 BRAF mu­ta­tions — for a big stake in a new, joint­ly con­trolled biotech called Map­Kure with Bain-backed Spring­Works.

Tech­nol­o­gy is bleed­ing in­to health­care, and big phar­ma is rid­ing the wave. Sanofi $SNY ap­point­ed its first chief dig­i­tal of­fi­cer this Feb­ru­ary, fol­low­ing the foot­steps of its peers. By May, the French drug­mak­er and some of its big phar­ma com­pa­tri­ots joined forces with Google par­ent Al­pha­bet’s Ver­i­ly unit to aug­ment clin­i­cal tri­al re­search. On Tues­day, the Parisian com­pa­ny tied up with Google to ac­cess its cloud com­put­ing and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence tech to spur the de­vel­op­ment of new ther­a­pies.

While it’s wait­ing to hear back from FDA reg­u­la­tors, Roche is be­gin­ning the vic­to­ry lap for en­trec­tinib in Japan.

Roche is giv­ing Bay­er a run for their mon­ey with this tu­mor-ag­nos­tic drug, which tar­gets NTRK gene fu­sions. Now dubbed Ro­z­lytrek, it’s sanc­tioned to treat adult and pe­di­atric pa­tients in Japan with neu­rotroph­ic ty­ro­sine re­cep­tor ki­nase fu­sion-pos­i­tive, ad­vanced re­cur­rent sol­id tu­mors.