Illumina will put down a total of $8 billion to reacquire its former spinout Grail, which, after nearly five years on its own, is nearing completion of a simple blood test capable of detecting 50 different cancers in their earliest stages.

NIPOMO, Calif. — After Maria Duenas was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes about a decade ago, she managed the disease with diet and medication.

Patients with cervical cancer don’t have many options. Merck’s Keytruda became one of them in 2018, but the checkpoint inhibitor only works in patients whose tumors express PD-L1, and, even then, the FDA greenlighted the drug on the strength of just a 14% response rate. Enter Seattle Genetics and Genmab’s antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) tisotumab vedotin, which shrank tumors in one-quarter of patients with advanced cervical cancer and stopped tumor growth in half of them.

The former CEO and founder of Pandion Therapeutics and ex-chief scientific officer of Pfizer Anthony Coyle, Ph.D., has signed up to run Repertoire Immune Medicines’ R&D.

A popular idea for improving PD-1/L1 checkpoint inhibitors focuses on turning “cold” tumors that often evade the immune system into “hot” ones by recruiting more cancer-killing immune cells to the tumor microenvironment.

AstraZeneca’s Tagrisso has taken firm hold of the EGFR market over the last few years, pushing aside drugs including AZ’s own older drug Iressa. But could a combo approach be a viable alternative?

Abbott has received a European approval for the latest generation of its MitraClip device for repairing leaky heart valves.

AstraZeneca’s targeted drug Tagrisso is a go-to for treating non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients whose tumors harbor mutations in the gene EGFR. But patients invariably become resistant to the treatment over time, because their tumors develop new mutations that allow the cancer to escape treatment.

Takeda Pharmaceuticals USA has tapped Roche’s Foundation Medicine to develop tissue- and blood-based companion diagnostic tests for its portfolio of therapies for metastatic and late-stage lung cancers.

MPM Capital has hired Matthew Roden as executive partner. The role gives one of the driving forces behind Bristol Myers Squibb’s $74 billion takeover of Celgene the chance to help build biotechs.