Six days af­ter Genen­tech rolled out dis­ap­point­ing ear­ly-stage da­ta on its IDO1 drug GDC-0919 (navox­i­mod) in-li­censed from NewLink Ge­net­ics, the big Roche sub­sidiary is kick­ing it out of the pipeline.

NewLink $NLNK an­nounced that Genen­tech has hand­ed back all rights to the drug, though its dis­cov­ery part­ner­ship con­tin­ues. The can­cer drug spe­cial­ist is walk­ing away from a $1 bil­lion-plus deal that was inked with $150 mil­lion up­front.

NewLink’s shares cratered once again on the news, falling 31% by mid-morn­ing.

This is the lat­est in a se­ries of gut punch­es to NewLink, which was sent reel­ing last year and was forced to re­struc­ture in the wake of the fail­ure of its pan­cre­at­ic can­cer vac­cine. IDO, a hot tick­et in biotech now with In­cyte $IN­CY ev­i­dent­ly well in the lead, was sup­posed to be its path back.

The writ­ing, though, was on the wall when in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­port­ed that GDC-0919 de­liv­ered on­ly a 10% over­all re­sponse rate in all tu­mor types in a com­bi­na­tion study with Tecen­triq — a PD-L1 check­point that is al­so un­der a cloud since the big Phase III fail­ure in blad­der can­cer. Genen­tech is not known for pur­su­ing fu­tile work in can­cer.

NewLink was al­so forced to con­cede 6 days ago that its in-house IDO in­hibitor in­dox­i­mod failed a Phase II study for breast can­cer, mak­ing this a very bad, no good, aw­ful week for the biotech.

Charles Link Jr.

“We are ob­vi­ous­ly dis­ap­point­ed in this de­ci­sion,” said Charles J. Link, Jr., CEO of NewLink Ge­net­ics, in a state­ment. “We re­main com­mit­ted to ad­vanc­ing our IDO path­way in­hibitor in­dox­i­mod, which con­tin­ues to gen­er­ate ex­cit­ing da­ta in com­bi­na­tion with an­ti-PD-1 agents, can­cer vac­cines, and chemother­a­py in mul­ti­ple can­cer types in­clud­ing melanoma, prostate can­cer, acute myeloid leukemia, and pan­cre­at­ic can­cer.”

The biotech industry has faced repeated calls to diversify its workforce — and in the last year, those calls got a lot louder. Though women account for just under half of all biotech employees around the world, they occupy very few places in C-suites, and even fewer make it to the helm.

Some companies are listening, according to a recent BIO survey which showed that this year’s companies were 2.5 times more likely to have a diversity and inclusion program compared to last year’s sample. But we still have a long way to go. Women represent just 31% of biotech executives, BIO reported. And those numbers are even more stark for women of color.

With concerns about the Delta variant rising and much of the world still in desperate need of vaccine doses, a Chinese biotech announced Wednesday that a new shot has shown positive results in a large trial against Covid-19, including new variants.

Clover Biopharmaceuticals announced Wednesday that its vaccine candidate showed 79% efficacy against the Delta variant in a Phase II/III trial dubbed Spectra, and 67% effective against Covid-19 overall.

A year after raising a $47 million launch round, the fungi-loving drug hunters at Hexagon Bio have more than doubled their coffers.

Hexagon announced today that it raised another $61 million for its efforts to design cancer and infectious disease drugs based on insights mined from the DNA in millions of species of fungi. The new financing brings Hexagon’s committed funding to over $108 million.