Eye­Point Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, a biotech at­tempt­ing to grab a sliv­er of Re­gen­eron's share of the de­gen­er­a­tive eye dis­ease mar­ket, said six-month re­sults show its drug met the pri­ma­ry end­point in a Phase 2 tri­al.

At first, the da­ta did­n't ap­pear to please in­vestors. The read­out sent Eye­Point's shares EYPT down as much as 25% be­fore Wednes­day's open­ing bell. But the stock re­versed af­ter the mar­kets opened, with shares trend­ing up about 10%.

The study, dubbed VERONA, is test­ing Du­ravyu in pa­tients with di­a­bet­ic mac­u­lar ede­ma. The Boston-area biotech last fall raised $161 mil­lion on the back of ear­li­er in­ter­im da­ta from that tri­al.

Alys Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals is on the hunt for a large fi­nanc­ing to car­ry for­ward its pipeline — an amal­ga­ma­tion of six Medicxi star­tups — fol­low­ing the clear­ance of its first clin­i­cal tri­al this week.

The Boston and Lau­sanne, Switzer­land-based biotech — a Centes­sa 2.0 of sorts from the Eu­ro­pean in­vest­ment firm Medicxi — is ne­go­ti­at­ing the lead terms for its next fi­nanc­ing, Alys chair Francesco De Ru­ber­tis told End­points News. He's al­so co-founder and part­ner of Medicxi.

"Once we have the terms, we de­cide how much we raise in one go, but yes, we need a cou­ple hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars to bring all of the prod­ucts through" key clin­i­cal in­flec­tion points over the next two or three years, De Ru­ber­tis said. He's been in ne­go­ti­a­tions with pri­vate eq­ui­ty and life sci­ences crossover in­vestors for about three months, he added.

Bris­tol My­ers Squibb lays off 67 staffers in NJ: The com­pa­ny is let­ting go of 67 work­ers in Lawrence Town­ship be­tween April and De­cem­ber, ac­cord­ing to a New Jer­sey WARN No­tice. BMS has two sites in Lawrence — one hous­ing cor­po­rate of­fices and ear­ly dis­cov­ery re­search, and the oth­er com­mer­cial drug pro­duc­tion and late-stage R&D.

Ky­owa Kirin to cut 52 em­ploy­ees: The Japan­ese drug­mak­er is lay­ing off 52 work­ers at its fa­cil­i­ty in Prince­ton, NJ, as of Wednes­day, ac­cord­ing to a New Jer­sey WARN No­tice. The site hous­es com­mer­cial and clin­i­cal op­er­a­tions as well as cor­po­rate of­fices.

Am­gen said one of its ear­ly-stage obe­si­ty pro­grams has been put on a clin­i­cal hold by the FDA, while re­it­er­at­ing its am­bi­tions to be­come a ma­jor play­er in the crowd­ed field.

The com­pa­ny hasn’t re­vealed much about the pro­gram, called AMG-513, oth­er than that it's in Phase 1. On Tues­day, dur­ing the com­pa­ny's fourth-quar­ter earn­ings call, Am­gen head of R&D Jay Brad­ner de­clined to com­ment on the drug's mech­a­nism of ac­tion. The com­pa­ny said it doesn’t be­lieve the hold is re­lat­ed to the drug it­self, and is in talks with reg­u­la­tors to re­open the study.

GSK said it is hold­ing steady in the face of on­go­ing reg­u­la­to­ry and po­ten­tial po­lit­i­cal pres­sures on its vac­cines fran­chise, which saw full-year 2024 sales slide from the year pri­or.

The drop was most­ly due to low­er de­mand for the drug­mak­er’s RSV vac­cine Arexvy, the re­sult of a nar­row­er-than-ex­pect­ed rec­om­men­da­tion from the FDA’s Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Im­mu­niza­tion Prac­tices and more chan­nel in­ven­to­ry con­sump­tion com­pared with stock­ing when it first launched. Sales of Arexvy last year to­taled £590 mil­lion ($739 mil­lion), down just over 50% from 2023.

Arexvy is a “fan­tas­tic vac­cine that’s very much in the foothills of its de­vel­op­ment,” GSK CEO Em­ma Walm­s­ley told re­porters on a call Wednes­day. She added that the com­pa­ny nonethe­less ex­pects cer­tain pres­sures to con­tin­ue through­out 2025 — an out­look re­flect­ed in it fore­cast­ing a low sin­gle-dig­it per­cent­age de­crease in vac­cines turnover this year.