The Fed­er­al Re­serve on Wednes­day cut in­ter­est rates by a quar­ter of a per­cent­age point as ex­pect­ed, in a move that could breathe some life back in­to the bio­phar­ma in­dus­try.

Biotechs and their in­vestors have long called for low­er in­ter­est rates since the pan­dem­ic’s free-flow­ing fundrais­ing en­vi­ron­ment dried up a few years ago. It’s the biotech sec­tor's view that suc­cess is in­verse­ly cor­re­lat­ed with low or non-ex­is­tent in­ter­est rates, and once rates fall, com­pa­nies will have an eas­i­er time rais­ing mon­ey in the pub­lic mar­kets.

But the Fed’s bench­mark rate now sits at 4%, which is still high­er than the rates be­fore the Great Re­ces­sion start­ed in late 2007. The last time the Fed cut rates was in De­cem­ber, and there was a brief re­prieve, but then the mar­ket cooled down again. In­fla­tion, which prompt­ed the Fed’s rate in­creas­es in 2022 and 2023 and has eased in re­cent months, is al­so still high­er than it was be­fore the pan­dem­ic.

Re­gen­eron re­port­ed that its ex­per­i­men­tal treat­ment sub­stan­tial­ly re­duced harm­ful bone growths in peo­ple with a very rare dis­ease, and it’s plan­ning to ask the FDA for ap­proval.

In fi­brodys­pla­sia os­si­f­i­cans pro­gres­si­va, or FOP, bone growths re­place soft tis­sue such as mus­cles, ten­dons and lig­a­ments, which even­tu­al­ly makes mov­ing very chal­leng­ing or im­pos­si­ble. The drug, gare­tos­mab, is an an­ti­body against a pro­tein called ac­tivin A, which is crit­i­cal to those bone growths.

Re­gen­eron en­rolled 63 peo­ple with the ul­tra-rare dis­ease in its study, and di­vid­ed them in­to three groups. One group re­ceived a 3 mg/kg dose of gare­tos­mab, one group was giv­en a 10 mg/kg dose, and the last group re­ceived place­bo in the Phase 3 tri­al.

In an ef­fort to cap­i­tal­ize on bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies look­ing to reshore man­u­fac­tur­ing to the US, AGC Bi­o­log­ics has put up a "for sale" sign on two of its fa­cil­i­ties in Col­orado. Al­so, the CD­MO will lay off 278 em­ploy­ees.

In what it calls a “struc­tured process,” a spokesper­son told End­points News that AGC Bio is look­ing to sell its mam­malian man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Boul­der. It is al­so look­ing for buy­ers for its cell and gene ther­a­py site in Long­mont, which it al­ready par­tial­ly closed last year.

AGC Bio will lay off 267 em­ploy­ees from its site in Boul­der and the oth­er 11 staffers will be let go from its oth­er US fa­cil­i­ties. Ac­cord­ing to a Col­orado WARN no­tice, the head­count re­duc­tion will be made from Nov. 15 un­til the end of the year.

The FDA is­sued warn­ing let­ters to tele­health com­pa­nies for mak­ing "false or mis­lead­ing" claims about com­pound­ed GLP-1 obe­si­ty drugs.

The let­ters were part of a larg­er group of warn­ings post­ed on Tues­day that were sent to on­line phar­ma­cies, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal gi­ants, tele­health star­tups and oth­er com­pa­nies as part of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion's clam­p­down on drug ad­ver­tis­ing.

Among the tele­health com­pa­nies that re­ceived let­ters were Hims & Hers and Rem­e­dy Meds, which bought fel­low dig­i­tal health plat­form Thir­ty Madi­son for $500 mil­lion. Both sell com­pound­ed ver­sions of pop­u­lar weight loss drugs. While these com­pound­ed drugs are not ap­proved by the FDA, they surged in pop­u­lar­i­ty over the past few years dur­ing the na­tion­wide short­age of GLP-1 drugs. Some tele­health com­pa­nies cap­i­tal­ized on the de­mand, build­ing en­tire busi­ness­es around the al­ter­na­tive ver­sions.