After the FDA approved BMS’s new LAG-3 oncology drug late last week, Bristol Myers Squibb is diving headfirst into a hyper-niche field of oncology research. The big pharma is pairing up with NYC-based biotech Volastra Therapeutics, founded two years ago by researchers out of Memorial Sloan Kettering and Cornell.

The pharma and the biotech announced Monday morning a multi-year R&D collaboration, with Bristol Myers paying $30 million upfront to Volastra and throwing in a potential $1.1 billion in milestones, plus an additional opportunity for royalties.

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In the first look at Phase III data for lecanemab, Eisai and Biogen’s follow-up Alzheimer’s drug to the embattled Aduhelm launch, results show the drug passed with flying colors on a test looking at memory, problem solving and other dementia metrics.

One of the most-watched Alzheimer’s therapies in the clinic, lecanemab met the study’s primary goal on the CDR-SB — Clinical Dementia Rating-Sum of Boxes — giving the biotech the confidence to ask for full approval in the US, EU and Japan by next March 31. The experimental drug reduced clinical decline on the scale by 27% compared to placebo at 18 months, the companies said Tuesday night Eastern time and Wednesday morning in Japan.

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The FDA’s decision on Amylyx’s ALS drug is set to come out sometime Thursday. In a space with few drugs, any approval would be a major landmark.

But elsewhere in the ALS field, things are a bit more tepid.

Thursday morning, Biohaven announced that its drug verdiperstat failed its arm of an ALS platform trial led by Massachusetts General Hospital. According to a press release, the drug did not meet its primary endpoint — improvement on an ALS functional status test — or any key secondary endpoints at 24 weeks. The trial had enrolled 167 patients, giving them either verdiperstat or placebo twice a day.

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As a drug target, the NLRP3 inflammasome has drawn serious interest from Big Pharma, inspiring a series of M&A deals from Novartis and Roche on top of venture investments by others. Now Novo Nordisk is jumping on the bandwagon — and the Danish pharma giant is taking the target where it knows best.

Novo Nordisk is getting its NLRP3 inhibitors from Ventus Therapeutics, a Versant-backed startup that set out to make some of the best NLRP3 drugs out there by incorporating new insights into the structure of the target complex.

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A Chinese pharma is looking to go international with one of its preclinical candidates, and it’s teaming up with a Spanish company in a new pact potentially worth half a billion dollars to do just that.

Simcere and Almirall announced Thursday that the two companies had reached a deal for Simcere’s IL-2 mutant fusion protein drug candidate, called SIM0278. According to a statement, Almirall gets an exclusive right to develop and commercialize the drug candidate in all indications and markets outside of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau.

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