There’s a rea­son lots of com­pa­nies are work­ing on GLP-1-based drugs for obe­si­ty: The oth­er stuff tends not to work. The lat­est biotech to learn this the hard way is Wave Life Sci­ences, which said Thurs­day that its obe­si­ty can­di­date yield­ed weight loss of just 1% more than place­bo in an ear­ly-stage study.

The com­pa­ny’s stock WVE tanked more than 55% when trad­ing opened on Thurs­day morn­ing.

Pa­tients in the Phase 1 part of the IN­LIGHT study were giv­en a sin­gle 240 mg dose of WVE-007, a small in­ter­fer­ing RNA drug. Six months lat­er, the place­bo-ad­just­ed weight loss was 0.9%. The thresh­old for ap­prov­abil­i­ty for obe­si­ty meds has been set by the FDA at 5%.

Who knows what’s go­ing to hap­pen to the Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Im­mu­niza­tion Prac­tices?

For­mer mem­ber Robert Mal­one sug­gest­ed in a string of so­cial me­dia posts last Thurs­day that the group was go­ing to be dis­band­ed, which the gov­ern­ment quick­ly re­fut­ed. That’s af­ter a fed­er­al judge in Boston ef­fec­tive­ly paused the com­mit­tee’s work, and its de­ci­sions to date, in a rul­ing ear­li­er this month. (Mal­one says he has now re­signed from the com­mit­tee.)

It would be eas­i­er to dis­miss this as dra­mat­ic the­ater if the group wasn’t so im­por­tant. HHS Sec­re­tary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired every sit­ting mem­ber of ACIP last June and re­made it, large­ly to fit his vac­cine-skep­ti­cal ac­tivist past. Since then, the group has de­vel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion for fits of out­burst and con­fu­sion. Sci­ence aside, the meet­ings have been, frankly, a mess. Com­mit­tee mem­bers have be­rat­ed CDC of­fi­cials over their pre­sen­ta­tions; votes have been post­poned over con­fu­sion; and new mem­bers have been ap­point­ed weeks be­fore planned meet­ings.

Plus, news about Astel­las' se­tide­gra­sib and Anavex:

📈 Ko­di­ak’s eye drug win: The biotech’s ex­per­i­men­tal drug Zenku­da, whose sci­en­tif­ic name is tar­cocimab tedromer, beat a sham pro­ce­dure in pa­tients with di­a­bet­ic retinopa­thy in a Phase 3 tri­al. It’s the sec­ond Phase 3 tri­al to suc­ceed against a place­bo. But the big­ger test will come in a third late-stage study that’s test­ing Zenku­da against the block­buster eye drug Eylea. Da­ta are ex­pect­ed to read out in the third quar­ter. Like Eylea, Zenku­da is an an­ti-VEGF ther­a­py. Ko­di­ak’s stock price KOD rose about 68% on Thurs­day morn­ing. — Max Gel­man

The pill ver­sion of No­vo Nordisk's block­buster We­govy showed what was pos­si­ble when drug chemists turned pep­tides in­to oral mol­e­cules. Now in­vestors have found their next re­lat­ed bet.

Pin­na­cle Med­i­cines, a two-year-old start­up based in Shang­hai with op­er­a­tions out­side Philadel­phia, has at­tract­ed an $89 mil­lion Se­ries B, the com­pa­ny said Thurs­day. It has raised $134 mil­lion to bring its im­munol­o­gy and car­diometa­bol­ic med­i­cines in­to hu­man test­ing.

The start­up hopes to fol­low in the foot­steps of oth­er oral pep­tides in the car­diometa­bol­ic and im­munol­o­gy fields that have con­sumed re­cent head­lines, Pin­na­cle CEO Jonathan Wang said in an in­ter­view. Those in­cludes Novo's oral We­govy and John­son & John­son's pso­ri­a­sis pill Ico­tyde.

"We're re­al­ly de­vel­op­ing the next gen­er­a­tion oral pep­tides serv­ing large mar­kets, and it's mov­ing very quick­ly," Wang said.