From an ill-fated proposal to ban rebates for pharmacy benefit managers to an executive order demanding a “most-favored-nation price” for Medicare, if nothing else President Donald Trump has introduced Americans to a flurry of ideas to rein in pharma, an industry he once accused of “getting away with murder.” And now we’re getting the first glimpse of what a Joe Biden presidency might mean for prescription drug pricing.

Soon after Chris Nowers left Cell Medica — freshly rebranded Kuur Therapeutics — in February, the Kite Pharma alum was introduced to another cell therapy player.

The basic idea of building an off-the-shelf allogeneic platform with a CAR-NK approach was familiar to him, riding on the same wave as Takeda, J&J-backed Fate, Nkarta and others. But then there was something else that stood out: a membrane-bound TNF related apoptosis inducing ligand variant, or TRAIL variant, that’s also engineered onto the NK cell for a dual-targeted attack.

AbbVie and Roche’s Venclexta has gotten a new FDA thumbs up.

The pair announced Monday that regulators have approved the drug in combination with azacitidine or low-dose cytarabine for newly-diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia in adults who are 75 or older or those who can’t undergo intensive chemotherapy. This follows the drug’s accelerated approval in 2018 and positive data from two Phase III confirmatory trials.

Less than a week after Roche joined forces with Dyno Therapeutics to develop gene therapies using artificial intelligence, its giant subsidiary Genentech is hopping on the AI bandwagon with a different player.

Genentech has inked a deal with Stanford spinout Genesis Therapeutics to harness its AI power for drug development and discovery. Genesis is getting an upfront payment and milestones, but the companies are keeping the details under wraps for now. The Burlingame, CA-based biotech also stands to earn future royalties on any approved Genentech drugs that come from the deal.

A little less than two years after Endo Pharmaceuticals’ deal to purchase Somerset Therapeutics fell through, the Irish drugmaker is returning to the well with a much bigger acquisition.

Endo has agreed to buy BioSpecifics Technologies for a whopping $658 million, the two companies announced Monday, in the culmination of a research agreement signed all the way back in 2004. Endo will purchase all of BioSpecifics’ outstanding stock for about $540 million, valuing the company at $88.50 per share — a 45% premium on the $61.02 share price at which the company closed on Friday.