With cash preservation in mind, Rubius will dissolve, while EQRx, Impel, Cybin and Graphite cut jobs. Meanwhile, Jounce is restructuring and it plans to merge with Redx, yet the dually troubled firms MEI Pharma and Infinity will combine, while VBL will disappear in a reverse merger with Notable Labs. 

The first BCMA-targeting agent to gain approval in myeloma never became the blockbuster for which GSK had hoped, but Blenrep appears to have set a new standard for speed of voluntary withdrawal of an accelerated approval drug after a confirmatory trial failure.

Blenrep’s withdrawal will add to GSK’s blockbuster drought, and hopes of separate trial success for the BCMA-targeting drug in earlier stage myeloma may now be harder to achieve.

The US FDA process to force the withdrawal of the pre-term labor drug Makena is in its final stages. The product seems likely to finally leave the market – but may also demonstrate that there is a business to be built in contesting FDA withdrawal proceedings.