Bristol Myers Squibb has worked overtime to hunt down an edge for its PD-(L)1 blocker Opdivo over rival Keytruda from Merck, including taking a bold combo strategy with CTLA4 inhibitor Yervoy. But in head and neck cancer, the combo keeps dropping duds.

Opdivo plus Yervoy failed to show clinical benefit in extending the lives of first-line patients with recurrent or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck, according to topline results from the Phase III CHECKMATE-651 study revealed Friday.

A couple weeks after activist investor Elliott began its long-awaited attack on CEO Emma Walmsley, GlaxoSmithKline has unveiled a plan to sell over a third of the land at its Stevenage, UK, site to create “one of Europe’s largest ‘clusters’ for biotechnology” and early-stage life sciences companies.

The pharma is putting 33 acres up for sale, which GSK says could be developed into about 100,000 square meters of floor space and create thousands of jobs. All it would take, the company says, is a private developer to invest a little more than $552 million (£400 million).

A little less than a week before AstraZeneca’s takeover of Alexion is expected to be completed, the rare disease biotech  offered up a cut of data for its Soliris successor.

In a Phase III study for Ultomiris looking at adults with generalized myasthenia gravis, the drug met its primary endpoint of significantly improving scores on a patient-reported assessment compared to placebo after 26 weeks, Alexion announced Thursday afternoon. Alexion hopes the topline results represent what could be Ultomiris’ third approval, after it notched OKs for a rare blood disorder called PNH and an ultra-rare chronic disease that damages the kidneys.

Generation Bio is looking to move the field of gene therapy into the future, and thinks it has a manufacturing process in place that will allow enough scale for broad disease indications. Now, all it needs is a plant to put those large-scale ambitions into action.

Generation signed a lease on a new 104,000-square-foot facility in Waltham, MA, set to become operational in 2023. The facility will be available for preclinical and clinical development for its lead hemophilia A program.

By the time former Bristol Myers Squibb CSO Tom Lynch stepped in to run the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center last year, both the potential and limits of the institute’s preclinical research had become clear.

The institute’s researchers, including famed virologist Larry Corey, had helped make CAR-T therapies a reality, contributing basic science and co-founding Juno Therapeutics, the cell therapy startup Celgene bought out for $9 billion. But while cell therapies have now proven an effective — even sometimes curative — therapy across multiple blood cancers, the approach has been frustratingly difficult to apply to solid tumors.

Sanofi’s Sarclisa burst onto the multiple myeloma scene last year to challenge J&J’s CD38 heavyweight Darzalex. But J&J isn’t going down without a fight, and now it’s touting another approval for the hard-to-treat blood cancer — along with an easier route of administration that could save patients hours of their time.

The FDA has given Darzalex Faspro the thumbs-up as a second-line treatment for adults with multiple myeloma in combination with pomalidomide and dexamethasone (Pd), Janssen said Monday. The approval marks the sixth indication for Darzalex Faspro, which is co-formulated with Halozyme’s recombinant human hyaluronidase PH20, a type of enzyme that catalyzes the degradation of hyaluronic acid.