STAT+: Pharmalittle: We’re reading about a Novartis acquisition, Republicans backing clinical trial diversity, and more

Good morning, and welcome to a new week from STAT’s London outpost, with Andrew Joseph here filling in for Mr. Pharmalot. This country is celebrating its World Cup win last night (or rather, very early this morning local time, lots of bleary-eyed people out in the neighborhood today), and I can only hope that the U.S. will be in the same place tomorrow. Yet the World Cup (and Wimbledon) can’t completely distract from the news of the day, so onto the headlines we go. …

Novartis is pushing deeper into antibody-drug conjugate development, paying $1.1 billion upfront to buy Myricx Bio for a pipeline based on a novel payload, Fierce Biotech writes. The Swiss pharma company has been slower to buy into ADCs than some of its peers, but it’s made its move with London-based Myricx, which is designing cancer treatments that deliver N-myristoyltransferase inhibitor (NMTi) payloads. It’s a bit of a different approach from other ADCs, which Novartis predicts could tackle resistance and other limitations of existing payloads, broadening the use of ADCs across multiple tumor types.

While clinical trials got caught up in the Trump administration’s attack on policies related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, congressional Republicans would like to change that, STAT says. Last month, the Republican-controlled House passed a bill, mostly along party lines, to fund the Food and Drug Administration that was accompanied by a report that, while not legally binding, tells agency officials what congressional appropriators expected of them. The report states that it wants the FDA to continue implementing a law that requires companies to give the FDA their plans for diversifying clinical trials.

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