Up­dat­ed: News brief­ing: As­sem­bly Bio scraps mi­cro­bio­me pro­grams; In­ve­ni­AI, Ky­owa Kirin ex­pand part­ner­ship to fo­cus on nov­el tar­gets

More than a year af­ter Gilead’s for­mer R&D chief John McHutchi­son took the reins at As­sem­bly Bio­sciences, the San Fran­cis­co, Cal­i­for­nia-based com­pa­ny is pulling back from its mi­cro­bio­me pro­gram in or­der to con­cen­trate its re­sources on ad­vanc­ing a port­fo­lio of ther­a­peu­tics and core in­hibitors re­lat­ed to he­pati­tis B.

McHuchi­son said in a state­ment that the de­ci­sion to wind down the com­pa­ny’s mi­cro­bio­me pro­gram was “dif­fi­cult.” The com­pa­ny will ex­am­ine pos­si­ble al­ter­na­tives for the pro­gram, but if no oth­er op­tions are dis­cov­ered, its op­er­a­tions will cease by the end of Jan­u­ary.

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