Corbus Pharmaceuticals is laying off 54% of its workforce to eke its cash reserves out to mid-2022. The ax wielding follows the failure of lead drug lenabasum in two advanced clinical trials in the space of a month.

When the first placebo-controlled data for Gilead’s remdesivir came out, analysts agreed it was no “silver bullet” for COVID-19. But it didn’t have to be, said Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day, who saw it as a steppingstone to other treatments and one that could even be combined to work better. Now, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will test that theory as it kicks off a global study pairing the antiviral drug with plasma-based treatments.

Roche has bought a phase 1 pan-genotype cystic fibrosis program from Enterprise Therapeutics. The deal, which is worth £75 million ($97 million) upfront to Enterprise’s shareholders, gives Roche a TMEM16A potentiator designed to restore lung function in all cystic fibrosis patients.

The Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences has presented phase 1 data on its inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. The readout suggests the vaccine is safe and triggers an immune response, although a drop in neutralizing antibody titers from Day 14 to Day 28 is a potential cause for concern.

An FDA decision is looming for Alkermes’ ALKS 3831, a treatment for schizophrenia and bipolar I disorder that adds an opioid antagonist to a well-known antipsychotic to negate the weight gain and metabolic issues that come with the latter. An FDA panel will meet Friday to help the agency decide the treatment’s fate—and their major focus will be how the opioid antagonist will affect patients also taking opioids like morphine or oxycodone.

The aggressive brain cancer glioblastoma is infamously “cold” when it comes to immunotherapy, meaning it typically doesn’t respond to immune-boosting therapies because of immune-suppressing molecules in its environment.

In the U.S., about 37 million people live with kidney disease, which is more than 1 in 7 American adults. But Blaine McKee, the CEO of the newly unveiled Cambridge, MA, startup Walden Biosciences, hopes to change that.

Just two weeks after unveiling full data from its phase 1 program, Amgen’s KRAS inhibitor is back with more. The Big Biotech teased results from a phase 2 study that it says echo the efficacy seen in its closely watched phase 1 trial.

Germany’s Merck has decided to make a quick buck turfing out an unwanted bone drug to Novartis.

CRISPR evolved in bacteria as a form of “genetic vandalism,” as George Church, Ph.D., puts it, to fend off pathogens. That means it works very well in bacteria but runs into various obstacles when researchers try to put it to work in humans. Jennifer Doudna’s latest CRISPR company plans to surmount those hurdles with an entirely new CRISPR platform that does not rely on molecules found in nature.