Lon­za agreed to sell its cap­sules and health in­gre­di­ents busi­ness to a UK-based in­vest­ment firm for $2.2 bil­lion up­front.

The sep­a­ra­tion has been a long time com­ing for Lon­za, which first di­vulged plans to di­vest the unit in De­cem­ber 2024. At the time, CEO Wolf­gang Wien­and was about six months in­to his role and said the Swiss man­u­fac­tur­er is “not the best own­er any­more" for CHI.

In a news re­lease Fri­day, Lon­za called the deal the “last and most sig­nif­i­cant step” to com­plete its trans­for­ma­tion in­to a “pure-play CD­MO.” The deal with Lone Star Funds is ex­pect­ed to close in this year's sec­ond half.

The FDA has hand­ed In­cyte a com­plete re­sponse let­ter for a la­bel ex­pan­sion of the com­pa­ny's mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body Zynyz over is­sues at a third-par­ty man­u­fac­tur­ing site in In­di­ana that was for­mer­ly owned by Catal­ent.

In­cyte’s sup­ple­men­tal BLA for Zynyz as a treat­ment for metasta­t­ic non-small cell lung can­cer was re­ject­ed due to prob­lems with the fac­to­ry’s “reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance,” ac­cord­ing to an SEC fil­ing.

There were no is­sues di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to Zynyz, in­clud­ing with the drug's ef­fi­ca­cy, safe­ty and third-par­ty drug sub­stance man­u­fac­tur­er, the fil­ing states. The ap­pli­ca­tion was sup­port­ed with da­ta from In­cyte’s Phase 3 POD1UM-304 study.

In­cyte is now the third com­pa­ny to re­ceive a CRL due to on­go­ing is­sues at the trou­bled fa­cil­i­ty in Bloom­ing­ton, IN. Last year, Re­gen­eron and Schol­ar Rock were al­so hit with CRLs for drugs made at the fac­to­ry, which is now owned by No­vo Nordisk.

Eli Lil­ly is mak­ing moves in East Asia.

The In­di­anapo­lis drug­mak­er said Wednes­day it is ear­mark­ing $3 bil­lion over the next decade to in­crease its man­u­fac­tur­ing foot­print in Chi­na. Ear­li­er this week, Lil­ly said it is in­vest­ing $500 mil­lion in South Ko­rea over the next five years through a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with the gov­ern­ment.

Lil­ly’s Chi­na bud­get will be used to boost lo­cal pro­duc­tion of its GLP-1 pill or­for­glipron and oth­er oral drugs. Or­for­glipron is un­der re­view by Chi­nese reg­u­la­tors for obe­si­ty and type 2 di­a­betes.

There are cur­rent­ly no GLP-1 weight loss pills avail­able in Chi­na, mean­ing Lil­ly could be the first to mar­ket there, with no re­ports of No­vo Nordisk fil­ing for ap­proval in the coun­try. No­vo’s Ry­bel­sus, which is an oral ver­sion of semaglu­tide, is ap­proved in Chi­na for type 2 di­a­betes.

Evotec plans to close an­oth­er four sites and cut about a sixth of its staff amid a broad­er, mul­ti-year shake-up.

It’s the lat­est round of lay­offs for the Ger­man biotech and man­u­fac­tur­er, which has cut hun­dreds of em­ploy­ees over the last two years. The com­pa­ny al­so changed CEOs, shut­tered its gene ther­a­py unit, and closed five sites be­tween 2024 and 2025.

Evotec said Tues­day it will re­duce its foot­print to 10 fa­cil­i­ties. As a re­sult, the com­pa­ny ex­pects to elim­i­nate up to 800 po­si­tions. Last month, Evotec said it had rough­ly 4,800 glob­al em­ploy­ees.

Evotec’s CEO Chris­t­ian Wo­jczews­ki said in a news re­lease that the next phase of its re­or­ga­ni­za­tion will “po­si­tion the com­pa­ny for sus­tain­able, high-qual­i­ty growth.” The com­pa­ny ex­pects its plans will be “sub­stan­tial­ly im­ple­ment­ed by the end of 2027.”

Ipsen is pulling its can­cer drug Tazverik from the mar­ket af­ter an in­de­pen­dent da­ta mon­i­tor­ing com­mit­tee found safe­ty con­cerns in a con­fir­ma­to­ry tri­al.

The com­mit­tee re­port­ed cas­es of sec­ondary can­cers that be­gin in blood-form­ing tis­sue, al­so known as hema­to­log­ic ma­lig­nan­cies, in a fol­lic­u­lar lym­phoma study dubbed SYM­PHO­NY-1. The tri­al pit­ted Tazverik plus the im­munother­a­pies lenalido­mide and rit­ux­imab as a sec­ond-line treat­ment against the lat­ter two stan­dard-of-care med­i­cines alone.

Ipsen said it’s with­draw­ing Tazverik im­me­di­ate­ly for all of its ap­proved us­es, in­clud­ing fol­lic­u­lar lym­phoma and ep­ithe­lioid sar­co­ma. A spokesper­son de­clined to com­ment on the num­ber of hema­to­log­ic ma­lig­nan­cies ob­served in the tri­al, and said that more re­search is nec­es­sary.