Back in November, when the execs at Moderna laid plans for today’s day-long dive on their vaccine portfolio, the world of vaccine R&D was a much different place: dominated by slow-moving major players with thin margins that discouraged much by way of innovation. Without any public demands for a change.

Coronavirus changed all that — perhaps forever.

While Moderna’s years-long mission to create a new generation of vaccines — an early de-risking effort to highlight their broader chances — may be fundamentally intact, the public has become transfixed by the idea of a relatively near-term solution to a health crisis far beyond anything seen in living memory. And that is playing a major role in accelerating the work of a small group of vaccine revolutionaries that includes Moderna — even though they have yet to prove in a pivotal study that their technology is both safe and effective.

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Since the first experimental Duchenne gene therapy programs came about, the space has proven rife with safety issues and patient deaths in clinical trials. Pfizer and three biotechs now think they’ve found a reason why.

The four companies suggested there may be a “class effect” causing the adverse events in Duchenne gene therapies, they wrote in a new study. They specifically highlighted how side effects in five patients across three trials, who all showed muscle weakness with cardiac involvement, were “strikingly similar.”

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Flagship has crafted a new startup out of pieces from a pair of fledglings in the VC’s nest. And a prominent Roche veteran who ran one of the biotechs won’t be making the next leg of the journey.

The new company is called Sonata Therapeutics, which is picking up the work that Inzen was doing related to the cellular microenvironment and combining with Flagship’s Cygnal Therapeutics, which came out of stealth more than 3 years ago and put Pearl Huang — the BeiGene founder and former Roche SVP — at the helm.

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Vertex Pharmaceuticals has been one of the buzzier names in the bustling Boston biotech scene, but now the company is looking to vault to number one status — at least in terms of physical footprint.

At a ribbon cutting on Tuesday for its new Jeffrey Leiden Center for Cell and Genetic Therapies at the Boston Seaport, Vertex announced it would embark on a new project: The company will build a 344,000 square foot facility in the seaport to accommodate the company’s growing R&D needs, especially in its cell and gene therapies program.

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Martin Shkreli, the infamous biotech CEO who made headlines for his jeering assault on a legion of critics in and out of Congress, is back on the streets after 4 years inside a federal penitentiary.

Shkreli’s attorney put out a statement Wednesday afternoon saying that the “pharma bro” had been transferred to a halfway house in New York with a few more months to go under federal custody, slated to end September 14. Attorney Benjamin Brafman acknowledged the release and vowed that he and Shkreli are keeping quiet.

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