The FDA placed a par­tial hold on Dai­ichi Sankyo and Mer­ck’s Phase 3 study of a lung can­cer drug af­ter the com­pa­nies paused en­roll­ment for what they called a "high­er than an­tic­i­pat­ed in­ci­dence" of deaths from in­ter­sti­tial lung dis­ease.

The study in ques­tion, IDeate-Lung02, is ex­am­in­ing the an­ti­body drug con­ju­gate known as ifi­natam­ab derux­te­can, or I-Dxd, in re­lapsed small cell lung can­cer, pit­ted against cur­rent­ly avail­able treat­ments. Dai­ichi had stopped re­cruit­ment and en­roll­ment fol­low­ing the re­port­ed deaths.

The pause "does not im­pact oth­er stud­ies in the I-DXd clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment pro­gram," the com­pa­nies said in a joint state­ment. "We are eval­u­at­ing the po­ten­tial im­pact of the par­tial clin­i­cal hold on study da­ta read­out tim­ing, cur­rent­ly pro­ject­ed for fis­cal year 2027."

The new for-prof­it spin­off from the AI re­search group Fu­ture­House has raised a $70 mil­lion seed round, the lat­est fund­ing be­hind the nascent idea of au­tonomous sci­ence.

San Fran­cis­co-based Edi­son Sci­en­tif­ic said Thurs­day it plans to use the raise, which val­ues the start­up at $250 mil­lion, to scale up and sell its AI soft­ware de­signed to help sci­en­tists with a range of re­search tasks. The seed round was led by Tri­atom­ic Cap­i­tal and Spark Cap­i­tal. Bloomberg first re­port­ed the raise and val­u­a­tion.

The au­tonomous sci­ence space broad­ly aims to make AI mod­els that can do sci­ence on their own. Fu­ture­House has fo­cused main­ly on fine-tun­ing and ap­ply­ing the large lan­guage mod­els from AI com­pa­nies such as Ope­nAI and An­throp­ic on­to sci­en­tif­ic tasks.

Mod­er­na has snagged a new part­ner to help pay for a Phase 3 study of its H5 pan­dem­ic in­fluen­za vac­cine, more than six months af­ter the US axed fund­ing for the project.

The Coali­tion for Epi­dem­ic Pre­pared­ness In­no­va­tions will in­vest up to $54.3 mil­lion to fi­nance the study, slat­ed to be­gin in ear­ly 2026, Mod­er­na said Thurs­day. The piv­otal tri­al will test the safe­ty and im­muno­genic­i­ty of mR­NA-1018 and will be run in the UK and US.

CEPI is fill­ing a fi­nan­cial void left by the US gov­ern­ment, which ter­mi­nat­ed a con­tract with Mod­er­na ear­li­er this year to help fund the tri­al; the axed deal gave the US rights to pur­chase sup­ply of the shot.

Eli Lil­ly’s ex­per­i­men­tal obe­si­ty pill al­lowed pa­tients who had lost weight on in­ject­ed GLP-1-based drugs to keep most of the weight off for an­oth­er year, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from a Phase 3 tri­al re­leased Thurs­day.

This main­te­nance set­ting is a new fron­tier for weight loss meds, and could be an im­por­tant one for oral ther­a­pies. US ap­provals of Lil­ly's oral can­di­date, called or­for­glipron, and No­vo Nordisk’s ri­val obe­si­ty pill are ex­pect­ed soon.

Lil­ly's study, called AT­TAIN-MAIN­TAIN, was a con­tin­u­a­tion of an ear­li­er tri­al called SUR­MOUNT-5. That test­ed the com­pa­ny’s in­ject­ed GLP-1/GIP ag­o­nist Zep­bound head-to-head with No­vo Nordisk’s GLP-1 shot We­govy, giv­en for near­ly a year and a half in 751 pa­tients with obe­si­ty. Zep­bound won.