With a trio of biotechs hitting the Nasdaq on Friday, it was easy to miss a smaller-scale public debut from another clinical-stage drug developer on the other side of the European Society of Medical Oncology annual meeting this weekend.

An academic partnership to improve diversity in clinical trials has drafted its first industry team members. Amgen and Merck will help Equitable Breakthroughs in Medicine Development (EQBMED) enroll patients in local clinical trials as part of the partnership’s pilot program.

Novo Nordisk isn’t done with the RNA deals, this time penning a $530 million biobucks deal to work with Korro Bio on two cardiometabolic-related targets.

Bristol Myers Squibb has jettisoned another cancer candidate in-licensed under its former CEO. Immatics is the latest partner to get a termination notice, leaving it in full control of a bispecific molecule that BMS picked up for $150 million upfront late in 2021.

After announcing a phase 3 launch based on positive midstage results, iTeos Therapeutics and GSK are finally sharing the highlights from the phase 2 TIGIT trial, revealing a more than 30% difference in confirmed overall response rates between the investigational treatment versus monotherapy.

Four years after launching a remote-controlled robotic laboratory in San Diego, Eli Lilly is shipping the operation overseas. The Big Pharma is selling a majority of the Life Sciences Studio laboratory to Arctoris, a contract research organization with headquarters in Oxford, England and Boston.

Another contender has emerged in the race to develop oral GLP-1 drugs for weight loss. Biolexis Therapeutics’ small molecule BLX-7006 reduced the weight of obese mice by 15% over a 28-day span.

AstraZeneca has shared an early look at the performance of its in-house antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) technology, publishing phase 1 data on candidates that could compete with molecules from AbbVie and Pfizer.

It’s an unusually busy Friday for biotech IPOs, with Zenas BioPharma, MBX and Bicara Therapeutics all going public with fine-tuned offerings.

The FDA should be more open and collaborative to unleash a surge in approvals of rare disease drugs, according to a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.