January 29, 2026

The need-to-know this morning:

Sanofi and Roche reported fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings.
Summit Therapeutics said the FDA accepted its application seeking approval of its PD-1/VEGF antibody ivonescimab to treat non-small cell lung cancer. A decision date is expected on Nov. 14.
AstraZeneca plans to invest $15 billion in China through 2030 to expand its manufacturing and R&D capabilities.

exclusive

Eric Schmidt-backed Hologen chases big AI bet

Hologen, a secretive AI biotech co-founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, is seeking to raise $150 million in a Series A round at an alleged $850 million valuation, STAT’s Brittany Trang has learned. The company is pitching investors on technology it claims can “de-risk” late-stage clinical trials by modeling biological heterogeneity that obscures true drug effects.

“All prior technologies have failed to capture this heterogeneity with a fidelity anywhere close to what Hologen has achieved with its breakthrough tech,“ the company wrote in its slide deck.

Spun out of U.K. academic centers and armed with exclusive NHS data partnerships, the company says its “large medicine models” could shorten trials, boost success rates, and generate unusually fast returns. It’s making a rather lofty claim to investors — offering a 100% return within 12 months, and projecting a $150 billion valuation by 2032.

artificial intelligence

DeepMind's AlphaGenome targets DNA's dark matter

More than two decades after scientists realized that so-called “junk DNA” plays a major role in controlling gene activity, researchers are increasingly turning to AlphaGenome, a new artificial intelligence model from Google DeepMind. It’s designed to predict how long stretches of DNA manage to regulate genes — a notoriously difficult biological problem, STAT’s Megan Molteni writes.

First unveiled last June, the model has already drawn nearly 3,000 users worldwide. Along with publication in Nature, DeepMind is releasing AlphaGenome’s source code for noncommercial use, a move researchers say is critical for unlocking its full potential in studying cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and other complex conditions. Unlike earlier tools that tackle gene regulation piecemeal, AlphaGenome predicts 11 regulatory processes at once from raw DNA sequence.

“The broader aim for all this is to be able to, with very high accuracy, predict the effect of all mutations,” DeepMind research scientist Žiga Avsec said at the press briefing Tuesday.

cancer

Sources: ImmunityBio's Soon-Shiong mischaracterized FDA talks on bladder cancer drug

The FDA last year refused to consider an application from ImmunityBio — the biotech chaired by billionaire physician Patrick Soon-Shiong — to expand the use of its bladder cancer drug Anktiva. Regulators cited inconclusive clinical data and a filing that ran afoul of regulatory guidelines, STAT’s Adam Feuerstein writes in his weekly Biotech Scorecard newsletter, citing people with knowledge of the FDA’s actions.

Soon-Shiong later mischaracterized a face-to-face meeting with regulators, these people said, while publicly blaming the FDA for derailing the effort.

The standoff comes as the Soon-Shiong company seeks to broaden Anktiva beyond its April 2024 approval for high-risk carcinoma in situ into the much larger papillary bladder cancer market. The move is aimed at fending off Johnson & Johnson’s rival drug Inlexzo, approved last October for the same type of bladder cancer.

autoimmune disease

Lilly, Repertoire strike $2 billion autoimmune alliance

Eli Lilly has signed a broad collaboration with Flagship-backed Repertoire Immune Medicines to develop a new class of “tolerizing” therapies for autoimmune disease, a deal worth up to $1.93 billion, including $85 million upfront, milestones, and tiered royalties.

The agreement, Repertoire’s third in autoimmune disease and its largest to date, will apply the company’s DECODE platform across multiple indications with the aim of resetting the immune system to stop attacking healthy tissue without broadly suppressing immunity.

The platform-style deal follows earlier autoimmune partnerships with Bristol Myers Squibb and Genentech and underscores growing pharma interest in precision approaches that promise durable remission rather than chronic immune suppression.

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