Big Phar­ma ex­it­ed from the an­tibi­otics space one by one. And now they may be com­ing back to­geth­er.

Pfiz­er, Eli Lil­ly, No­vo Nordisk, Boehringer In­gel­heim, Bay­er Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, Mer­ck KGaA and the Amer­i­can Mer­ck — one of the last gi­ants stand­ing — are team­ing up to cre­ate a $1 bil­lion for-prof­it ven­ture to bet on small biotechs de­vel­op­ing mid-stage an­tibi­otics, Ed Sil­ver­man re­port­ed for STAT.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials from Ger­many, Swe­den, France and the UK, as well as rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Well­come Trust and Pew Char­i­ta­ble Trusts, will join the com­pa­nies to an­nounce the ini­tia­tive on Ju­ly 9, Sil­ver­man wrote. The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion and the Eu­ro­pean In­vest­ment Bank are al­so in­volved in what is be­ing billed as a new so­lu­tion to the “an­tibi­ot­ic in­no­va­tion chal­lenge.”

Con­sid­er­ing the num­ber of play­ers and the col­lec­tive heft they bring — plus the fact that the EIB might con­tribute as much as 10% — the mon­ey isn’t much. By phar­ma stan­dards, $1 bil­lion won’t even buy you a bolt-on deal, typ­i­cal­ly in the $2 bil­lion to $5 bil­lion range. It al­so marks the thresh­old for block­buster sta­tus that any big can­cer drug fran­chise could eas­i­ly sur­pass.

Still, mil­lions of dol­lars could pro­vide a life­line for biotechs starved of cash, es­pe­cial­ly in a field that many VCs are stay­ing out of.

Just days ago La Jol­la sealed the third — and seem­ing­ly fi­nal — buy­out for Tetraphase and its com­mer­cial an­tibi­ot­ic, pre­vail­ing over mul­ti­ple com­pet­ing bids by Acel­Rx and Melin­ta. And even that on­ly cost $43 mil­lion in up­front cash and $16 mil­lion in po­ten­tial CVRs.

The key ques­tion will be whether the cre­ation of this new ven­ture, which Sil­ver­man de­scribed as an ex­ten­sion of the work of pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship CARB-X in back­ing ear­ly-stage an­tibi­otics de­vel­op­ment, will be ac­com­pa­nied by changes in the re­im­burse­ment sys­tem. At the end of the day, if de­vel­op­ers can’t make much mon­ey off their drugs, in­vestors may not see a point in try­ing to help get them ap­proved at all.

As con­cerns about an­tibi­ot­ic re­sis­tance loom ever larg­er, though, the ef­fort it­self may count.

“The think­ing is that, ide­al­ly, if they put mon­ey in [the fund], this will serve them in the long run, but al­so make them look good,” reads a key quote. “They got pret­ty bad press when they walked out on an­tibi­otics.”

The EMA is putting EU member states on alert over the shortage of two drugs that counter heart attacks due to an uptick in demand.

On Friday, the EMA sent out a warning that two Boehringer Ingelheim drugs are experiencing a shortage: Actilyse and Metalyse. The drugs are used as emergency treatments for adults experiencing acute myocardial infarction, or a heart attack, by dissolving blood clots that have formed in the blood vessels.

Back in April, Amgen said it was encouraged by the solicitor general’s anticipated review of its Supreme Court petition to rehear a Repatha patent case. They’re likely much less optimistic about the outcome now.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a recent 27-page brief that Amgen’s arguments “lack merit and further review is not warranted.”

The case traces back to a suit filed in 2014 against Sanofi and Regeneron’s Praluent, which ended up beating Amgen’s PCSK9 blockbuster Repatha to market by a month just a year later.

At Klick Health’s first Ideas Exchange conference with biotech and pharma industry insiders since before the pandemic began, it was no surprise many conversations included Covid topics. Yet while vaccines and treatments were discussed, so too were the effects on drug development, federal responses, health inequities — and what to do now and next.

George Yancopoulos, chief scientist and cofounder of Regeneron, opened the conference responding to a question from Acorda CEO Ron Cohen about the spotlight on the industry during Covid and some of the “flak” biopharma has taken in the past.

Almost a year after the FDA gave the green light to LA-based Aadi Bioscience’s first drug, the biotech is looking to private investors to keep itself going.

The oncology player announced Thursday that it has engaged with both new and existing investors in a PIPE financing — selling 3.3 million shares at $12.50 a share, the biotech’s closing price at Nasdaq on Wednesday. The company is also selling off pre-funded warrants to purchase over 2.4 million more shares at $12.4999 per pre-funded warrant.