Met­sera was­n't the on­ly obe­si­ty com­pa­ny that was ac­quired this month.

Tucked in­to As­traZeneca's third-quar­ter earn­ings up­date was the news that it bought Swiss-based Six­Peaks Bio, which is work­ing on drugs that could help pa­tients lose weight but pre­serve mus­cle mass. The deal in­cludes $170 mil­lion in cash, and fu­ture pay­ments of as much as $130 mil­lion.

Six­Peaks emerged in the spring of 2024, an­nounc­ing at the same time that As­traZeneca had an op­tion to ac­quire the start­up once it filed its first IND. But in a sign of just how fast the field is mov­ing, the com­pa­nies sped up that process and closed the deal. The ap­pli­ca­tion for that first clin­i­cal tri­al is "im­mi­nent," Six­Peaks CEO Philip Just Larsen said in an in­ter­view this week with End­points News.

Plus, news about Mer­ck­'s Win­re­vair, Biokin, TC Bio­Pharm, Nu­va­lent and In­vivyd:

📉 Lay­offs at Mer­ck in New Jer­sey: The drug­mak­er will let go of 204 work­ers in Rah­way, NJ, ef­fec­tive in the months of Feb­ru­ary, March and May next year, ac­cord­ing to a WARN no­tice. “We re­main com­mit­ted to New Jer­sey, as we con­tin­ue to em­ploy more than 8,000 peo­ple in the state,” a spokesper­son said. In Ju­ly, the com­pa­ny said it is tar­get­ing to re­duce its work­force by 6,000 po­si­tions. – Rey­nald Cas­tane­da

📉 Bris­tol My­ers Squibb al­so to lay off staffers in New Jer­sey: The lay­offs, which will af­fect 110 peo­ple in Lawrenceville, will take ef­fect in Feb­ru­ary and March next year, as per a WARN no­tice. The move is a part of BM­S' plan to save cash, a spokesper­son said. Its lat­est dis­clo­sure is on top of the drug­mak­er's pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced plans in May to cut its head­count in the state by over 500 work­ers. — An­na Brown

Roche said Tues­day that its breast can­cer pill beat stan­dard of care when used af­ter surgery. This could set the drug up as a new ther­a­py of choice in this set­ting, the com­pa­ny added.

How­ev­er, a com­pa­ra­ble study of As­traZeneca’s sim­i­lar pill — both are se­lec­tive es­tro­gen re­cep­tor de­graders or SERDs — will re­port da­ta next year, and it is pos­si­ble that its re­sults in this set­ting will turn out to be stronger.

An in­ter­im da­ta cut from Roche's Phase 3 lid­ERA tri­al showed that giredestrant ex­tend­ed in­va­sive dis­ease-free sur­vival com­pared with stan­dard-of-care hor­mone ther­a­py. Around a third of pa­tients giv­en post­sur­gi­cal hor­mone ther­a­py, the cur­rent stan­dard treat­ment, see their can­cer re­cur.

The length­en­ing of the time to re­lapse was sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant and clin­i­cal­ly mean­ing­ful, Roche said, meet­ing the tri­al’s pri­ma­ry end­point.

Van­da Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals said a drug can­di­date that it li­censed from Eli Lil­ly sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced vom­it­ing and nau­sea rates in a mid-stage tri­al of over­weight and obese peo­ple tak­ing a GLP-1 ag­o­nist.

Around 29% of pa­tients who re­ceived Van­da’s tradip­i­tant be­fore tak­ing a 1 mg dose of No­vo Nordisk’s We­govy ex­pe­ri­enced vom­it­ing com­pared with 59% of place­bo pa­tients. The re­sult is sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant and trans­lates to a 50% rel­a­tive re­duc­tion in vom­it­ing risk, ac­cord­ing to a Tues­day re­lease.

Fur­ther, 22% of pa­tients on tradip­i­tant re­port­ed vom­it­ing and sig­nif­i­cant nau­sea ver­sus 48% of place­bo pa­tients.

The Phase 2 study en­rolled 116 over­weight or obese peo­ple who hadn’t tak­en a GLP-1 ag&s