A bill that re­quires the Di­rec­tor of Na­tion­al In­tel­li­gence to de­clas­si­fy new in­for­ma­tion on the ori­gins of Covid-19 passed the House unan­i­mous­ly on Fri­day. The bill sim­i­lar­ly cleared the Sen­ate last week, and now heads to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s desk.

The White House hasn’t of­fi­cial­ly re­leased a state­ment on whether Biden will sign the bill, but he al­so has not in­di­cat­ed that he would ve­to it. In 2021, Biden told the US in­tel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and gov­ern­ment labs to in­crease their ef­forts to reach a con­sen­sus over the two com­pet­ing the­o­ries on how Covid-19 start­ed.

The bill re­quires the DNI to de­clas­si­fy all of the in­for­ma­tion no longer than 90 days af­ter its ap­proval, in­clud­ing ac­tiv­i­ties re­lat­ed to the Wuhan In­sti­tute of Vi­rol­o­gy in Chi­na, and in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing re­searchers at the lab who fell ill in the fall of 2019. The bill al­so asks for an un­clas­si­fied re­port to be sub­mit­ted to Con­gress with nec­es­sary redac­tions.

The in­tel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and fed­er­al gov­ern­ment have been di­vid­ed on the ori­gins. Some be­lieve the virus like­ly orig­i­nat­ed in an an­i­mal mar­ket in Chi­na and jumped to hu­mans, while oth­ers be­lieve it like­ly re­sult­ed from a lab ac­ci­dent in Chi­na.

The US En­er­gy De­part­ment re­cent­ly sent shock­waves through the ori­gins dis­cus­sion when it said the Covid pan­dem­ic most like­ly came from a lab leak in Chi­na, ac­cord­ing to re­port­ing in the Wall Street Jour­nal. And FBI Di­rec­tor Christo­pher Wray al­so made sim­i­lar com­ments on Fox News ear­li­er this month, say­ing the start of the pan­dem­ic “most like­ly” came from “a po­ten­tial lab in­ci­dent in Wuhan.”

An un­clas­si­fied re­port from the Of­fice of the DNI said that four in­tel­li­gence agen­cies “as­sess with low con­fi­dence that the ini­tial SARS-CoV-2 in­fec­tion was most like­ly caused by nat­ur­al ex­po­sure to an an­i­mal in­fect­ed with it or a close prog­en­i­tor virus.”

The re­port added that an­a­lysts at three in­tel­li­gence agen­cies were un­able to say ei­ther way, with­out more in­for­ma­tion.

Chi­nese of­fi­cials have de­nied that the Wuhan In­sti­tute of Vi­rol­o­gy had any­thing to do with the out­break and said they were shar­ing da­ta and re­search re­sults on virus trac­ing, the As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­port­ed, though the US De­part­ment of State has said that the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has “sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly pre­vent­ed a trans­par­ent and thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic’s ori­gin.”

Microcap biotech Seelos Therapeutics is halting enrollment of its study in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (also known as Machado-Joseph disease) because of “financial considerations,” and in order to focus on other studies, the company said today, adding that the pause would be temporary.

The study will continue with the patients who have already enrolled, and the data from them will be used to decide whether to continue enrolling others in the future.

Otonomy may be shutting down, but the lessons learned there will live on at another biotech working on new treatments for hearing loss.

San Francisco-based Spiral Therapeutics has bought certain assets related to three of Otonomy’s programs, ranging from data, patent rights, and know-how to inventory. That includes data around Otonomy’s twice-failed lead program, OTO-104 (Otividex), a sustained-exposure formulation of dexamethasone.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”