Siemens Healthineers have participated in a US$25m Series A extension of the CRISPR diagnostics specialist VedaBio Inc and signed a strategic agreement.

Wageningen-based food-tech scale-up Revyve has raised €24m in a Series B financing, bringing its total capital raised to more than €40 million. The company will use the proceeds to scale up its yeast-based egg replacement to the 1,600 t/a scale.

Swiss Roche AG will advance its injectable obesity lead CT-388 into Phase III studies starting in H1/2026. With combination therapies, the Swiss pharma major aims at becoming obesity company No. 3 by 2030, Roche Pharma CEO Teresa Graham said at Roche’s Pharma Day in London.

Lille-based Genfit SA has discontinued Phase II development of its lead drug candidate VS-01, a liposomal ammonia scavenger designed to prevent organ failure in acute chronic liver failure (ACLF). The company will reprioritise its (preclinical) pipeline, including VS-01, which will be further developed in the area of urea cycle disorder (UCD).

Lisbon’s immuno-oncology company Mondego Bio Lda has left stealth mode through a Series A financing led by Biovance Capital, supported by OrbiMed and Torrey Pines.

Roche has signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire 89bio and its Phase III candidate pegozafermin, an FGF21 analogue for the treatment of moderate to severe metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH). The deal is expected to close in Q4 2025.

CSL has signed an option and collaboration agreement with VarmX valued at up to US$2.2bn. The company will pay US$117m upfront and will fund a global Phase III trial of VMX-C001.

British Enhanced Genomics Ltd has extended its Series A funding to US$19m. Investors include BGF, Parkwalk, and Meltwind.

Monte Rosa Therapeutics Inc, founded in Basel in 2018, can look forward to an upfront payment of US$120m for its second collaboration and licensing deal with Novartis AG to develop protein degraders. A total of US$5.7bn is on the table for the new development of an anti-inflammatory candidate that is not part of Monte Rosa’s pipeline.

The FDA under President Trump is heading for a radical break with decades of practice: the external advisory committees that have long served as critical checks in approval decisions are to be largely sidelined. George Tidmarsh, head of the Centre for Drug Evaluation and Research, has dismissed the panels as redundant and instead wants to rely on the publication of Complete Response Letters (CRLs). Officially, the move is framed as efficiency – in reality, it raises serious questions about the agency’s transparency.