Pa­tient groups face a hard­er and un­pre­dictable path go­ing state-by-state to boost screen­ing for rare but treat­able con­di­tions af­ter the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion dis­band­ed a fed­er­al ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee on new­born screen­ing.

In April, the Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Her­i­ta­ble Dis­or­ders in New­borns and Chil­dren was shut down fol­low­ing an ex­ec­u­tive or­der signed by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to elim­i­nate “un­nec­es­sary” fed­er­al func­tions, an HHS spokesper­son said. The com­mit­tee guides states on which dis­eases to screen for at birth.

Rare dis­ease ad­vo­cates are still push­ing to sal­vage the com­mit­tee, but for now say they have no re­al al­ter­na­tive but to shift to­ward a de­cen­tral­ized strat­e­gy.

The im­pact of the pan­el's ter­mi­na­tion, which is start­ing to be felt, threat­ens to de­lay ac­cess to ear­ly de­tec­tion that’s crit­i­cal for pa­tients who are el­i­gi­ble for new ther­a­pies from com­pa­nies like Or­chard Ther­a­peu­tics and Mirum Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

One of Mer­ck’s most promi­nent part­ners just got ac­quired.

LaNo­va Med­i­cines is be­ing bought out by Hong Kong-based Sino Bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal for $950.9 mil­lion, Sino an­nounced Tues­day morn­ing. Sino took a 4.91% stake in the Shang­hai-based biotech in No­vem­ber, be­fore say­ing Tues­day that it plans to ac­quire the re­main­ing 95.09% of the shares.

LaNo­va was found­ed in 2019, but it’s al­ready made a mark thanks to one of its lead drugs, for­mer­ly LM-299, now called MK-2010. It’s a PD-1/VEGF bis­pe­cif­ic an­ti­body that's part of a bur­geon­ing sec­tor in im­muno-on­col­o­gy. LaNo­va put MK-2010 in­to a Phase 1 tri­al in Chi­na last Oc­to­ber. A month lat­er, Mer­ck paid LaNo­va $588 mil­lion up­front to li­cense the drug. It al­so promised LaNo­va up to $2.7 bil­lion in po­ten­tial mile­stones.

Jiang­su Hen­grui Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ in­ject­ed GLP-1/GIP ag­o­nist helped obese pa­tients in a Chi­na-based tri­al lose around 18% of their weight af­ter around 11 months’ treat­ment, Hen­grui and its US part­ner Kail­era Ther­a­peu­tics said Tues­day.

On a cross-tri­al ba­sis, this is not bad, mar­gin­al­ly beat­ing what Eli Lil­ly’s sim­i­lar­ly act­ing Zep­bound showed at one year in its own piv­otal Chi­na tri­al.

In Phase 2, a high­er dose of Hen­grui’s drug, called HRS9531, post­ed weight loss of 22.8% af­ter just eight months.

Ad­just­ed for place­bo, weight loss in the Phase 3 tri­al was 16.3%, again bet­ter than the 15.2% seen with the high dose of Zep­bound.

A pre­spec­i­fied sup­ple­men­tary analy­sis found that the high­est dose, 6 mg week­ly, al­lowed pa­tients to lose 19.2% of their weight, or 17.7% when ad­just­ed for place­bo.

Plus, news about UTEC, Sel­l­as and On­co­ma­tryx Bio­phar­ma:

Ot­su­ka ac­quires im­munol­o­gy drugs from Can­tar­gia: The agree­ment will send ear­ly-stage CAN10 and pre­clin­i­cal 3G5 to Ot­su­ka for $33 mil­lion up­front. Both pro­grams are de­signed to tar­get IL-1RAP. CAN10 is cur­rent­ly in a Phase 1 study in healthy vol­un­teers. Can­tar­gia can al­so get up to an­oth­er $580 mil­lion in mile­stones. — Max Gel­man

JCR, Acu­men part­ner on Alzheimer’s pro­gram: The deal cen­ters on a pro­gram called sabir­ne­tug, which is an an­ti­body de­signed to cross the blood-brain bar­ri­er and tar­get tox­ic sol­u­ble amy­loid be­ta oligomers. JCR will get $40 mil­lion up­front and can ob­tain up to an ad­di­tion­al $515 mil­lion in mile­stones. — Max Gel­man