→ The EMA of­fi­cial­ly said good­bye to its Ca­nary Wharf head­quar­ters in Lon­don on Fri­day, to set up shop in Am­s­ter­dam — a de­ci­sion trig­gered by Britain’s 2016 de­ci­sion to leave the EU.

To­day we are clos­ing our Lon­don of­fices af­ter al­most a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry. Thank you, Lon­don for be­ing such a gra­cious host! https://t.co/R8LXjfzvp3 pic.twit­ter.com/8abqM­cbROJ

— EU Med­i­cines Agency (@EMA_News) March 1, 2019

→ The EU reg­u­la­tor al­so is­sued pos­i­tive rec­om­men­da­tions for a slate of treat­ments, list­ed be­low:

EMA’s hu­man med­i­cines com­mit­tee rec­om­mends 8 #med­i­cines for ap­proval at its Feb­ru­ary 2019 meet­ing https://t.co/VCEd­e­qi­Aar #CHMP pic.twit­ter.com/0Z1cC­N­fkng

— EU Med­i­cines Agency (@EMA_News) March 1, 2019

• Sanofi/Re­gen­eron‘s Dupix­ent for se­vere asth­ma, set­ting up the ex­pan­sion of the med­i­cine’s la­bel, which cur­rent­ly cov­ers atopic der­mati­tis
• Sanofi $SNY had an­oth­er en­dorse­ment, for its di­a­betes drug so­tagliflozin, to be sold un­der the brand name Zyn­quista
• Bio­Marin Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals $BM­RN has won back­ing for peg­valiase, which has been dubbed Pa­lynz­iq, for phenylke­tonuria, a rare but po­ten­tial­ly se­ri­ous in­her­it­ed meta­bol­ic dis­ease
• The agency en­dorsed grant­i­ng a con­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing au­tho­riza­tion for Akcea’s volane­sors­en — to be sold as Waylivra — as the first med­i­cine to treat fa­mil­ial chy­lomi­cron­aemia syn­drome, a rare ge­net­ic dis­ease that thwarts the body from break­ing down fats
• An­oth­er con­di­tion ap­proval was rec­om­mend­ed for Por­to­la Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ $PT­LA an­dex­anet al­fa, brand­ed as On­dexxya — an an­ti­dote for pa­tients on cer­tain clot-fight­ers, when the use of the an­ti­co­ag­u­lants leads to life-threat­en­ing or un­con­trolled bleed­ing
• Ab­b­Vie $AB­BV se­cured rec­om­men­da­tion for risankizum­ab — brand­ed as Skyrizi — for plaque pso­ri­a­sis

These rec­om­men­da­tions fol­lowed two oth­ers from Thurs­day:

• GSK’s $GSK zanamivir — to be sold as Dec­to­va— for com­pli­cat­ed and po­ten­tial­ly life-threat­en­ing in­fluen­za
• Pfiz­er $PFE se­cured back­ing for con­di­tion­al ap­proval of lor­la­tinib — brand­ed as Lorvi­qua — to treat a form of non-small cell lung can­cer

→ Un­der fire from Star­board and Welling­ton — which have made their op­po­si­tion against the $74 bil­lion buy­out of Cel­gene $CELG abun­dant­ly clear — Bris­tol-My­ers $BMY has been try­ing to shore up in­vestor sup­port be­hind-the-scenes, CN­BC re­port­ed on Fri­day. The re­port sug­gest­ed Bris­tol had sent ex­ec­u­tives to New York to meet with in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors sev­er­al times over the last two weeks and met with in­vestors in Boston on Wednes­day and Thurs­day, cit­ing a per­son briefed on the meet­ings.

→  UK-based AdoRx Ther­a­peu­tics has tied up with J&J $JNJ to de­vel­op lung can­cer drugs in a deal with undis­closed fi­nan­cial terms.

Steve Holtzman was awoken by a 1 a.m. call from a doctor at Duke University asking if he could put some pigs on a plane and fly them from Ohio to North Carolina that day. A motorcyclist had gotten into a horrific crash, the doctor explained. He believed the pigs’ livers, sutured onto the patient’s skin like an external filter, might be able to tide the young man over until a donor liver became available.

Pfizer will present its case to the FDA’s vaccine adcomm next week, seeking authorization for a lower-dose version of its Covid-19 vaccine for kids ages 5 through 12, which the Biden administration said will likely begin rolling out early next month.

Two primary doses of the 10 µg vaccine (the dose for those ages 12 and up is 30 μg) given 3 weeks apart in this group of children “have shown a favorable safety and tolerability profile, robust immune responses against all variants of concern including Delta, and vaccine efficacy of 90.7% against laboratory-confirmed symptomatic COVID-19,” the company said in briefing documents ahead of next Tuesday’s meeting of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.

David Livingston, the Dana-Farber/Harvard Med scientist who helped shine a light on some of the key molecular drivers of breast and ovarian cancer, died unexpectedly last Sunday.

One of the senior leaders at Dana-Farber during his nearly half century of work there, Livingston was credited with shedding light on the genes that regulate cell growth, with insights into inherited BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations that helped lay the scientific foundation for targeted therapies and earlier detection that have transformed the field.