Revenues are still elusive for a surprising number of the novel drugs approved by the FDA five years ago. Emergent safety issues and confirmatory clinical trial failures were less common than lack of competitiveness as the main reason for revenue weakness.

Taysha gains control of GAN candidate and program; BI licenses COMT inhibitors from Lieber Institute; plus three new gene therapy-driven tie-ups between biopharma and academia.

The path of spin-offs from loss-making biotech companies with weak investment propositions seems clouded with examples that often resulted in an appointment with the liquidator.

The US Veterans Administration is attracting more interest from drugmakers seeking to grow their foothold in the lucrative – but scientifically challenging – market for CNS disorders. The allure comes from VA’s strong analytics and data crunching capabilities as well as its investigatory and trial management expertise in high-profile areas like traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress and major depression.