Paul Berns was in the mid­dle of a hair­cut when his phone rang.

A month ear­li­er, he had helped steer the biotech he co-found­ed, Met­sera, to a $7.3 bil­lion deal with Pfiz­er. With the deal signed, Met­sera was now fo­cused on in­te­grat­ing with the gi­ant New York drug­mak­er, and Berns was think­ing about what he would do next.

But on the oth­er end of the phone was No­vo Nordisk CEO Mike Doust­dar. It was Sat­ur­day, Oct. 25, and a month ear­li­er, No­vo had of­fered as much as $10 bil­lion for Met­sera, but lost. Doust­dar had been shocked when he was awak­ened ear­ly on the morn­ing of Sept. 22 by a call from Met­sera’s chair­man, who told him the biotech had tak­en Pfiz­er’s low­er — but more cer­tain — bid.

Phar­ma’s big quest to make safer blood thin­ners is­n't go­ing well.

On Fri­day, Bris­tol My­ers Squibb and John­son & John­son an­nounced that a Phase 3 tri­al of their ex­per­i­men­tal drug mil­vex­i­an was un­like­ly to suc­ceed in pre­vent­ing ma­jor heart events such as heart at­tack or stroke. The com­pa­nies will dis­con­tin­ue the study.

It was ex­pect­ed to en­roll 16,000 pa­tients, and is one of three mas­sive tri­als Bris­tol My­ers and J&J are run­ning for mil­vex­i­an.

The stop­page marks a sec­ond such piv­otal tri­al dis­con­tin­u­a­tion for the class of treat­ments, known as fac­tor XI in­hibitors, rais­ing ques­tions as to whether these drugs have a fu­ture. In 2023, Bay­er stopped its own 14,000-plus-pa­tient study of a fac­tor XI can­di­date called asun­dex­i­an in atri­al fib­ril­la­tion af­ter it per­formed worse than an old­er drug.

Carte­sian Ther­a­peu­tics said it will fo­cus de­vel­op­ment of its lead cell ther­a­py can­di­date on pa­tients with myas­the­nia gravis and myosi­tis, and will pause work in an­oth­er im­mune con­di­tion known as sys­temic lu­pus ery­the­mato­sus.

That's de­spite re­port­ing pos­i­tive da­ta in a small tri­al of the lu­pus pa­tients. The ther­a­py, called Descartes-08, led to re­mis­sion in two of the three peo­ple. Sys­temic lu­pus ery­the­mato­sus, or SLE, af­fects more than 1.5 mil­lion peo­ple in the US and can be dead­ly, in­flam­ing and dam­ag­ing or­gans. It cur­rent­ly has no cure, ac­cord­ing to Carte­sian.

Carte­sian said it will in­stead put its re­sources to­ward myosi­tis, which can al­so be dead­ly and can lead to weak mus­cles, pain, heart is­sues and chal­lenges breath­ing and swal­low­ing. The com­pa­ny said that its da­ta led it to be­lieve that Descartes-08 could have "strong mech­a­nis­tic align­ment" for treat­ing the dis­ease. It hopes to be­gin a piv­otal tri­al by the mid­dle of next year. It has an on­go­ing Phase 3 tri­al in myas­the­nia gravis.

Plus, news about Cen­tu­ry Ther­a­peu­tics, nChro­ma Bio, Bio­haven, Ve­rastem On­col­o­gy and Tande­mAI:

🧳 Pfiz­er trims stake in BioN­Tech: The US drug­mak­er now has around $163.5 mil­lion worth of BioN­Tech shares af­ter cut­ting its stake by 54.7%, ac­