As it rolls out the first jabs of its Covid-19 vaccine in the US, J&J already has its eyes on the next pandemic. Now, it’s willing to bet up to $780 million on a new class of drugs that Cidara Therapeutics says could take out all strains of the flu.

Janssen, J&J’s Belgian subsidiary, is plunking down $27 million upfront for access to Cidara’s lead antiviral conjugate CD388, which CEO Jeffrey Stein says has the potential to treat and protect against all flu strains with a single dose. The deal is one example of the next wave of pipeline work being established as the US begins to get its hands around the current pandemic.

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Gilead and Kite are plunking down big cash to get into the anti-BCMA CAR-T game.

The pair will shell out $225 million in cash upfront and $100 million in equity to Arcellx, Kite announced Friday morning, to develop the biotech’s lead CAR-T program together. Kite will handle commercialization and co-development with Arcellx, and profits in the US will be split 50-50.

Concurrent with the deal, Arcellx revealed its latest cut of data for the program known as CART-ddBCMA, ahead of a full presentation at this weekend’s ASH conference — a 100% response rate among patients getting the therapy. Investors jumped at the dual announcements, sending Arcellx shares $ACLX up more than 25% in Friday’s morning session.

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This profile is part of Endpoints News’ 2022 special report about Women in Biopharma R&D. You can read the full report here.

Amber Salzman’s life changed on a cold, damp day in Paris over tiny plastic cups of lukewarm tea.

She was meeting with Patrick Aubourg, a French neurologist studying adrenoleukodystrophy, or ALD, a rare genetic condition that causes rapid neurological decline in young boys. It’s a sinister disease that often leads to disability or death within just a few years. Salzman’s nephew was diagnosed at just 6 or 7 years old, and died at the age of 12.

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This profile is part of Endpoints News’ 2022 special report about Women in Biopharma R&D. You can read the full report here.

In a small but widely-cited 11-person study published in NEJM in 2020, seven patients saw signs of their cancer completely go away after getting a new therapy made from natural killer cells. The study was one of the earliest to provide clinical proof that the experimental treatment method had promise.

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After receiving feedback on pivotal studies from European regulators, but not yet the FDA, Novartis is out-licensing a pan-RAF inhibitor going after tumors excited by the RAS/MAPK pathway.

To get the exclusive worldwide license to the asset, Erasca is paying the Swiss Big Pharma $20 million upfront in cash and $80 million worth of shares. Erasca CEO Jonathan Lim told analysts Friday morning that the process was “competitive,” implying his biotech was far from the only one attempting to snag the drug from Novartis, which is going through a reorganization and a fine-tuning to its pipeline.

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This profile is part of Endpoints News’ 2022 special report about Women in Biopharma R&D. You can read the full report here.

Like many scientists, Fiona Marshall would tell you that she loved the natural world growing up — going to look at crabs running around the beach near her childhood home, pondering about the tides. But one thing about biology, in particular, stood out: It was constantly changing, and changing very quickly.

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