Improvements in generating, purifying, and delivering RNA material, as well as addressing challenges with degradation by enzymes, have made the RNA class more attractive to drug developers.

With only weeks to go in 2022, the three major pharmas each had inked between 16 and 20 deals. Meanwhile, Pfizer has been less busy with 12 deals, but those include M&A totaling $18.2bn.

Final guidance targets the ‘multiplicity problem.’ At about half the length of the 2017 draft, the final removes some sections, truncates other and drops several examples.

Beam Therapeutics also announced that it dosed the first patient in its Phase I/II sickle cell disease trial; Vyne stepped into the increasingly competitive vitiligo space, while Tracon moved further into sarcomas in its checkpoint inhibitor program, and Telix started a small trial of its drug in brain cancer.