argenx's $2.2B Immunology Buy, J&J's In Vivo CAR-T Bet, and the FDA's Adcomm Revival – This Week in Biotech #111
argenx pays 86% premium for Forte's first-in-class CD122 antibody, J&J commits $785M upfront for in vivo CAR-T optionality, and FDA panels vote down Capricor while Replimune's briefi(7/24-7/30, 2026).
Welcome back to This Week in Biotech by Biotech Blueprint, edition 111, covering biotech and pharma news from July 24 to July 30, 2026.
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VIDEO SUMMARY
THIS WEEK’S KEY TAKEAWAYS 🔑
Earnings week showed a clear contrast in how big pharma is spending. Sanofi wrote off about €1 billion (€952M of it on amlitelimab, an OX40 ligand antibody) and killed three immunology programs. GSK announced £1.9 billion in annual cuts and is closing its Stevenage research site. Takeda, Regeneron and Bristol Myers all trimmed programs in the same 48 hours. But at the same time, argenx paid $2.2 billion (an 86% premium) for Forte Biosciences and its first in class CD122 antibody, and Johnson & Johnson committed $785 million upfront on Sail Biomedicines, a preclinical in vivo CAR-T platform, with an option to buy the whole company for another $2.58 billion. Big pharma isn't abandoning immunology but it seems to be abandoning conventional antibody immunology. What they will pay up for right now is mechanism novelty with a clinical signal, or a delivery technology that changes the economics of an approved modality.
The other big thread was regulatory. The FDA’s advisory committees are back, and they’re not being gentle. A panel voted 9-3 that Capricor had not shown enough evidence that deramiocel works in Duchenne cardiomyopathy, with reviewers describing the cardiac benefit as a mirage produced by revising the statistical analysis plan. A day earlier, briefing documents called Replimune’s melanoma trial “not interpretable” and the stock lost 30 to 40% before the panel even met. Both companies are on their second or third try at the same approval. The convenient story since Marty Makary left has been that this FDA is looser. What’s actually happening is that contested cases are being sent to public panels rather than handled inside the agency, which puts the risk on shareholders and makes the briefing document itself the tradable event. The acting chair of the FDA’s oncology panel also resigned this week, leaving a thin bench thinner.
Last thing worth noting is that incretins keep finding new organs to work on. Altimmune’s pemvidutide cut heavy drinking days by 1.45 more per week than placebo in alcohol use disorder, every key secondary hit, and a biomarker of alcohol intake was down at p<0.0001. Small trial, about 100 patients over 24 weeks, but alcohol use disorder has three approved drugs that basically nobody takes, and this is the first controlled mid stage trial of a glucagon/GLP-1 dual agonist to read out in the indication. Still early but it keeps alive the idea that the metabolic platform reaches into addiction.
BIOTECH/PHARMA NEWS 🧬
🔹 argenx is acquiring Forte Biosciences for about $2.2B, $77 per share in cash via tender offer, roughly an 86% premium to Forte’s volume weighted average price since it reported positive phase 1b vitiligo data on July 9. The asset is FB102, a first-in-class antibody against CD122, the shared receptor subunit that gates interleukin-2 and interleukin-15 signalling in pathogenic T cells and natural killer cells. Forte has clinical proof of concept in two very different diseases, vitiligo and celiac, which is what argenx is paying the premium for. The company is pitching FB102 as a pipeline in a product, with alopecia areata and other autoimmune indications behind it. Strategically this is argenx buying a second engine. Vyvgart (efgartigimod) is a neonatal Fc receptor blocker that clears pathogenic antibodies, and it is carrying essentially the whole company. CD122 attacks upstream cellular drivers instead, and it’s a mechanism argenx doesn’t otherwise run. Three weeks from a Phase 1b readout to a signed $2.2B tender offer is the fastest data to deal conversion of the year.
🔹 Johnson & Johnson is paying $785M upfront, including a $465M equity investment, for an exclusive option to acquire Sail Biomedicines outright for $2.58B. Sail was formed from the 2023 merger of Flagship Pioneering’s Senda Biosciences and Laronde, and combines circular “endless RNA” payloads with programmable nanoparticles to reprogram T cells inside the patient rather than in a manufacturing suite. The lead program, SAIL-0839, is still preclinical and its target disease has not been disclosed. J&J is buying the manufacturing thesis, not a molecule. Conventional CAR-T requires apheresis, ex vivo engineering and lymphodepleting chemotherapy, which is tolerable in relapsed blood cancer and unworkable in lupus or myositis. In vivo delivery is the only route to autoimmune scale volumes. That logic is now consensus, which is why at least six in vivo CAR-T developers have been bought since early 2025, Eli Lilly taking Kelonia and Bristol Myers taking Orbital among them.
🔹 The FDA’s Cellular, Tissue and Gene Therapies committee voted 9-3 on July 29 that Capricor had not demonstrated substantial evidence of effectiveness for deramiocel in Duchenne-related cardiomyopathy. Agency reviewers argued the benefit was “essentially a mirage aided by switching up a statistical analysis plan” and that the changes “lack a scientific basis.” The arithmetic supports the charge. Under a revised statistical model, the left ventricular ejection fraction effect moved from 2.4 percentage points at p=0.04 to 1.8 points at p=0.09. Panelists called the findings fragile. The decision date is August 22, following a complete response letter in July 2025. Two days earlier the same dynamic hit Replimune, whose shares fell roughly 30 to 40 percent when reviewers called the single-arm IGNYTE trial for RP1 plus nivolumab “not interpretable,” on the grounds that an intratumoral injection study can’t separate a systemic anti-cancer effect from a local one. RP1 posted a 33.6% objective response rate and a 24.8 month median duration of response in anti-PD-1 failed melanoma, and has already been rejected twice, in July 2025 and April 2026. Its panel met July 30 on a single question, whether the results are evaluable and clinically meaningful, with a decision due August 2.
🔹 GSK is taking out about £1.9B ($2.5B) in annual costs over three years, closing its Stevenage research site and building a new global research centre in Cambridge, UK. The forcing function is dolutegravir, the backbone of a HIV franchise that generated more than $5B last year and loses patent protection between 2028 and 2030. Chief executive Luke Miels is holding a £40B 2031 sales target with 62 drugs in the clinic and 19 in late stage testing, funded partly by redeploying the savings into late stage programs and partly by the acquisitions of Nuvalent (about $11B), Rapt Therapeutics ($2.2B), Boston Pharmaceuticals ($1.2B) and 35Pharma. Job numbers were not disclosed. Shares rose about 4%, with Jefferies noting the cut was roughly double what it expected. GSK also expanded its artificial intelligence partnership with Relation Therapeutics to as much as $110M. Cutting the base and buying the pipeline is the standard patent-cliff playbook. The tell is that the R&D estate itself is being consolidated, not just headcount.
🔹 Sanofi recorded €1B in impairment charges in the second quarter, €952M of it on amlitelimab, and discontinued amlitelimab, itepekimab and balinatunfib. Itepekimab is the Regeneron-partnered interleukin-33 antibody that failed one of a pair of Phase 3 trials in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The commercial business is not the problem. Sales grew 17.8% in the quarter, Dupixent grew 37.6%, and full year guidance was upgraded to about 10% growth at constant exchange rates. Three months into the job, chief executive Belén Garijo is describing the plan as an R&D cleanup plus more M&A plus a China push, which is the same sequence GSK and Biogen are running. The uncomfortable read for the sector is that the assets being cut are late stage immunology antibodies at a company that owns the category’s biggest drug. If Sanofi can’t make a second wave cytokine antibody pay behind Dupixent, the bar for everyone else’s is higher than the consensus models assume.
🔹 Altimmune’s RECLAIM trial randomised about 100 patients 1:1 to 2.4 mg of pemvidutide, a glucagon/GLP-1 dual agonist, or placebo once weekly for 24 weeks in adults with alcohol use disorder. Heavy drinking days fell by 4.2 per week from baseline on drug versus 2.75 on placebo, a placebo-adjusted difference of 1.45 days at p=0.0014. Every key secondary hit: patients reaching zero heavy drinking days (p=0.0066), percentage of abstinent days (p=0.0075), and phosphatidylethanol (p<0.0001), a blood biomarker of alcohol intake that is much harder to fake than a drinking diary. Placebo-adjusted weight loss was 9.1% at 24 weeks (p<0.0001). Tolerability was described as generally favourable. The biomarker result matters more than the diary result, because self reported drinking in a trial where patients know they are being watched needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Alcohol use disorder affects tens of millions of American adults and has three approved medicines that almost nobody takes. A Phase 3 in this indication would be the first serious test of whether incretin biology reaches reward pathways rather than just appetite.
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