When Steve Harr sketched out the barebones essentials of his strategic plan for the new cell therapy company Sana Biotechnology a few days ago, he was careful to steer clear of detailing his exact plans for his first big raise for the biotech. But some numbers have been starting to appear — and not surprisingly they paint a picture of a young unicorn still at foal stage.

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The BACE theory of controlling Alzheimer’s died with failed pivotal projects at Merck, Eli Lilly and their partners at AstraZeneca. Now Amgen and Novartis have come along to bulldoze it under a mound of safety threats — leaving only Biogen and Eisai to carry on with a less than zero chance of success — with the notable addition that they may actually be doing harm to patients.

After the market closed Thursday, Amgen and Novartis announced that they were dumping two pivotal programs underway with the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute on their BACE drug CNP520 (umibecestat) after an independent review of the data indicated that patients’ cognitive abilities were actually worsening at a faster pace than the placebo arm.

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There’s a new CFO taking charge of the numbers at RNAi pioneer Alnylam.

Alnylam chief John Maraganore says that CFO Manmeet S. Soni is leaving in the proverbial pursuit of new opportunities. And he’s being replaced by ex-Shire CFO Jeff Poulton, not long after the Takeda takeover obliterated that position.

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It’s always been the case that there’s no medicine less useful than one that doesn’t make it to patients (unless you regard the task of R&D to be perpetually learning about swimming, while under water…). Yet, launching new medicines that physicians want, that payers will cover, and that patients will take, is a discipline that is unevenly distributed among the big players.

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So what exactly is the White House’s plan to tackle rising drug prices? It doesn’t look like we will get definitive answers anytime soon. On the heels of President Donald Trump’s surprise revelation that an executive order is in the works to implement a “favored nations clause,” his administration is now putting out word that it has abandoned an earlier proposal to overhaul rebates.

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Janet Woodcock is perhaps the most influential regulator at the FDA. And when the head of CDER talks about the changes being made at the agency when it comes to clinical trial designs, or the need to reorganize for a specific disease arena, an assessment of the expansion of gene therapy or I/O, common development mistakes, and so on, you can be sure the industry pays attention to every word.

So it was with some eagerness that I opened up Geoffrey Porges’ summary of their recent conversation about the FDA. And I wasn’t disappointed. In a wide-ranging exchange with the SVB Leerink analyst, Woodcock discussed the growing importance of patient-reported outcomes in clinical trials, a campaign underway now to see if CROs would help spur more basket studies to compare drugs head-to-head, and much, much more.

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