Build­ing off the suc­cess of the De­fense Ad­vanced Re­search Pro­jects Agency across the pond, the UK on Tues­day ap­point­ed DARPA deputy Pe­ter High­nam as chief ex­ec­u­tive of the UK’s new Ad­vanced Re­search and In­ven­tion Agency.

With £800 mil­lion ($1 bil­lion) in fund­ing, ARIA and High­nam will fo­cus ex­clu­sive­ly on re­search projects with far-reach­ing goals, with the “po­ten­tial to pro­duce trans­for­ma­tive tech­no­log­i­cal change, or a par­a­digm-shift in an area of sci­ence,” the UK gov­ern­ment ex­plained, not­ing that most pro­grams may fail.

UK-born and ed­u­cat­ed High­nam, who lists “R&D that makes a dif­fer­ence” in his about sec­tion on LinkedIn, has spent more than a decade work­ing for the US gov­ern­ment, with stints at BAR­DA, NIH, as well as di­rec­tor of the In­tel­li­gence Ad­vanced Re­search Pro­jects Ac­tiv­i­ty and di­rec­tor of re­search at Na­tion­al Geospa­tial-In­tel­li­gence Agency.

Kwasi Kwarteng

“Pe­ter High­nam’s ap­point­ment is a ma­jor tri­umph for the UK. His ex­pert di­rec­tion will lead the agency’s for­ma­tion, en­sur­ing the fund­ing of high-risk pro­grammes that will con­tin­ue to push the bound­aries of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy,” UK busi­ness sec­re­tary Kwasi Kwarteng said in a state­ment.

But his new role will be dif­fer­ent from his work at BAR­DA.

While Amer­i­ca’s DARPA, which High­nam spent his last four years at, pur­sues a range of tech ad­vances tied to De­part­ment of De­fense ob­jec­tives, “ARIA will de­part from the DARPA mod­el, but align with oth­er ARPA-in­spired bod­ies around the world such as Ger­many’s SPRIN-D and Japan’s Moon­shot R&D. We want to leave the door open to ARIA to forge links with mul­ti­ple gov­ern­ment de­part­ment cus­tomers, un­lock­ing new ways to tack­le a range of so­ci­etal prob­lems, and boost­ing UK in­dus­try in a range of sec­tors,” the UK gov­ern­ment said.

The gov­ern­ment al­so said it has com­mit­ted to in­creas­ing pub­lic in­vest­ment in R&D to £20 bil­lion ($27 bil­lion) in 2024-2025, and ARIA “will be an in­te­gral and in­valu­able part” of this ecosys­tem, the gov­ern­ment said.

The UK is still search­ing for ARIA’s first chair, as well, who will sup­port High­nam to de­sign and build ARIA from the ground up.

GSK, newly branded and soon-to-be demerged, shared interim results from its Phase II trial on its chronic hepatitis B treatment, one that it says has the “potential to lead to a functional cure.”

At a presentation at the EASL International Liver Congress, GSK shared that in around 450 patients who received its hep B drug bepirovirsen for 24 weeks, just under 30% had hepatitis B surface antigen and viral DNA levels that were too low to detect.

Despite whispers of a busy year for M&A, deal activity in the pharma space is actually down 30% on a semi-annualized basis, according to PwC’s latest report on deal activity. But don’t rule out larger deals in the second half of the year, the consultants said.

PwC pharmaceutical and life sciences consulting solutions leader Glenn Hunzinger expects to see Big Pharma companies picking up earlier stage companies to try and fill pipeline gaps ahead of a slew of big patent cliffs. Though a bear market continues to maul the biotech sector, Hunzinger said recent deals indicate that pharma companies are still paying above current trading prices.

Following the Supreme Court’s historic decision on Friday to overturn Americans’ constitutional right to an abortion after almost 50 years, Attorney General Merrick Garland sought to somewhat reassure women that states will not be able to ban the prescription drug sometimes used for abortions.

Following the decision, the New England Journal of Medicine also published an editorial strongly condemning the reversal, saying it “serves American families poorly, putting their health, safety, finances, and futures at risk.”

The story of Amryt Pharma’s candidate for the genetic skin condition epidermolysis bullosa, or EB, will soon enter another chapter.

After the Irish drugmaker’s candidate, dubbed Oleogel-S10 and marketed as Filsuvez, was handed a CRL earlier this year, the company announced in a press release that it plans to submit a formal dispute resolution request for the company’s NDA for Oleogel-S10.