Tristan Manalac

Tristan Manalac

Senior Staff Writer

Tristan is BioSpace‘s senior staff writer. Based in Metro Manila, Tristan has more than eight years of experience writing about medicine, biotech and science. Being formally trained in molecular biology, he once dreamed of collecting degrees and starting his own lab. But these days, he finds his greatest joy in a bottle of beer and a beautiful sentence. He can be reached at tristan.manalac@biospace.com, tristan@tristanmanalac.com or on LinkedIn.

Leading Beeline Medicines’ pipeline is afimetoran, which is in Phase 2 development for systemic lupus erythematosus with data expected later this year.
After divorcing Denali Therapeutics earlier this month, Takeda is now splitting up with Veritas In Silico, pulling back from a partnership that advanced novel small-molecule drugs targeting mRNA.
The FDA is asking Eli Lilly to submit cardiovascular and liver safety data from an ongoing Phase 3 trial of Foundayo by July.
The FDA has greenlit Travere Therapeutics’ Filspari as the only available treatment for focal segmental glomerulosclerosis despite the drug’s loss to Sanofi’s Avapro in a Phase 3 study.
IPO
Kailera Therapeutics is advancing a pipeline of obesity drugs, led by the GLP-1/GIP dual agonist ribupatide, which the biotech is developing both as an injectable and as a pill.
Some 30% of clinical trials that are mandated to report their findings have not posted results to clinicaltrials.gov, the federal government’s public repository for studies, according to internal data from the FDA.
Trastuzumab pamirtecan, being developed under a 2023 partnership between BioNTech and DualityBio, elicited a 44.1% overall response rate in a Phase 2 trial.
Telix is Regeneron’s entry ticket into the radiopharma game, helping to better round out the company’s cancer portfolio, according to Truist Securities.
Replimune’s CEO Sushil Patel has already warned that the biotech will need to cut staff and substantially scale back its U.S. manufacturing operations.
Analysts are cautiously optimistic about an IPO rebound for biopharma. BioSpace is keeping track of companies that seek to trade on the public markets this year.
GSK discontinued Wellcovorin in 1999, but the FDA in September last year asked the pharma to refile an application, pointing to its potential to treat cerebral folate deficiency with “autistic features.”
A Louisiana court on April 7 asked the FDA to complete its internal review of mifepristone’s safety and gave the agency six months to provide the court with an update on the investigation.
Roche is jumping into degrader-antibody conjugates, a modality that in recent years has attracted investments from Merck KGaA and Bristol Myers Squibb.
Sidewinder Therapeutics’ bispecific antibody-drug conjugates target pairs of receptors found on cancer cells, which the company claims improves their specificity and minimizes off-target effects.
Industry leader Steve Ubl has served as PhRMA’s CEO for more than a decade, the longest tenure of any head of the trade group.