→ 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.

Let the long battle for biosimilars in the cancer space begin.

Amgen has launched its Avastin and Herceptin copycats — licensed from the predecessors of Allergan — almost two years after the FDA had stamped its approval on Mvasi (bevacizumab-awwb) and three months after the Kanjinti OK (trastuzumab-anns). While the biotech had been fielding biosimilars in Europe, this marks their first foray in the US — and the first oncology biosimilars in the country.

→ On the same day it announced a $17.5 million Series C, life sciences and health data company Seer unveiled that it had lured former FDA commissioner and ex-CMS administrator Mark McClellan on to its board. “Mark’s deep understanding of the health care ecosystem and visionary insights on policy reform will be crucial in informing our thinking as we work to bring our liquid biopsy and life sciences products to market,” said Seer chief and founder Omid Farokhzad in a statement.

Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day’s new task hunting up a CSO for the company isn’t stopping the industry’s dominant antiviral player from doing pipeline deals.

The big biotech today snapped up 3 preclinical antiviral programs from pharma giant Novartis, with drugs promising to treat human rhinovirus, influenza and herpes viruses. We don’t know what the upfront is, but the back end has $291 million in milestones baked in.

Servier is walking out on a partnership with MacroGenics $MGNX — for the second time.

After the market closed on Wednesday MacroGenics put out word that Servier is severing a deal — inked close to 7 years ago — to collaborate on the development of flotetuzumab and other Dual-Affinity Re-Targeting (DART) drugs in its pipeline.

MacroGenics CEO Scott Koenig shrugged off the departure of Servier, which paid $20 million to kick off the alliance and $20 million to option flotetuzumab — putting a heavily back-ended $1 billion-plus in additional biobuck money on the table for the anti-CD123/CD3 bispecific and its companion therapies.