Af­ter lin­ing up a cou­ple of big bio­phar­ma col­lab­o­ra­tions with large up­front pay­ments in 2017, Cy­tomX $CT­MX is get­ting this year start­ed by bid­ding one of its first Big Phar­ma part­ners so long.

Sean Mc­Carthy,Cy­tomX CEO

The South San Fran­cis­co-based biotech says that Pfiz­er $PFE no­ti­fied them yes­ter­day that they are drop­ping out of the Pro­body deal, dis­card­ing its lat­est two tar­gets af­ter dump­ing the first on EGFR and nev­er go­ing af­ter the fourth. The deal, which start­ed out with a $25 mil­lion up­front pay­ment and a large $610 mil­lion pack­age of mile­stones, had helped val­i­date Cy­tomX’s plat­form tech on armed an­ti­bod­ies. Pfiz­er was look­ing for safer ver­sions of Er­bitux and Vectibix.

Cy­tomX scored $60 mil­lion in up­front cash when Am­gen signed up for a $1.5 bil­lion deal last fall. And that came af­ter Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb forked over $200 mil­lion in cash to get the biotech fo­cused on a safer, bet­ter CT­LA-4 to even­tu­al­ly suc­ceed Yer­voy.

Am­gen $AMGN jumped in for a T-cell en­gag­ing bis­pe­cif­ic tar­get­ing the Epi­der­mal Growth Fac­tor Re­cep­tor (EGFR), a high-val­ue tar­get ex­pressed on mul­ti­ple can­cer types. They’re build­ing on the biotech’s pre­clin­i­cal work on an EGFRx­CD3 pro­gram.

President Joe Biden made clear in his “finish the job” State of the Union address last night that one of those jobs to be finished is insulin prices.

Biden’s push again to tackle insulin prices, after Republicans rebuffed the idea last summer and just after Biden won Medicare drug price negotiations/caps via the Inflation Reduction Act, shows how heavily he’s leaning into this work.

Six weeks into his new role at the helm of Teva Pharmaceutical, Richard Francis said it’s time to “get back to growth,” starting with a good look at the company’s priorities.

The chief executive has kicked off a strategic review, he announced during Teva’s quarterly call, which will continue over the next several months and produce results sometime in the middle of 2023. That means some pipeline cuts may be in store, he told Endpoints News, while declining to offer much more detail.

We now know where Roche’s ex-pharma chief Bill Anderson is going.

German pharma giant Bayer announced Wednesday that Anderson will be taking on the role as CEO, less than six weeks after Anderson stepped down from his perch at Roche as head of the group’s pharmaceutical division.

Roche announced back in December that Anderson would depart on Dec. 31 to “pursue opportunities outside of Roche.” His replacement, Genentech vet and Roche’s current head of global product strategy, Teresa Graham, will start her role in March.

As talk of AI this-and-that gobbles up headline after headline, one Big Pharma is losing its AI leader as she transitions to another drug giant: Iya Khalil will trade in her hat as Novartis’ go-to expert and leader in the space for Merck as VP and head of data, AI and genome sciences next week.

After nearly three years leading the artificial intelligence team at Novartis — as Big Pharma and biotechs alike latch onto the ripening AI-for-drug-discovery mode of operation — Khalil will switch employers to head up a similar post at Merck, where she’ll work out of Cambridge, MA beginning Feb. 13, the company tells Endpoints News.