Drug Discovery News

Catch up on this week’s top industry news featuring FDA approvals, pharma deals, and more! Check out DDN’s Weekly Rundown ⬇️

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Drug discovery is changing fast, are you keeping up?  Join this two-day virtual symposium to explore how AI, novel models, and emerging technologies are shaping the future of drug development.  Hear from experts across pharma and biotech as they share approaches to tackling complexity, improving predictions, and accelerating progress to the clinic.  Register here: https://bit.ly/3PtD7rE

What’s still holding NAMs back from becoming the default in safety and drug development? According to Alex Armento of MatTek Life Sciences, it’s not just regulation — it’s risk, legacy infrastructure, and workflow integration. Even with decades of reproducible data, many NAM platforms are still perceived as “new,” and adoption is slowed by the need to redesign established pipelines built around animal data. The shift will accelerate, he suggests, when NAMs are seen as scientifically dependable and operationally seamless — not experimental alternatives. Read more here: https://bit.ly/4dwCNjB

A new study from Mount Sinai suggests mRNA vaccine effectiveness is shaped not just by immune cells, but also by non-immune cells like liver and muscle. In mouse models, preventing liver expression of a cancer vaccine significantly improved T cell responses and reduced tumour burden. Learn more: https://bit.ly/3RdNosr

The FDA recently released new guidance that clarifies how researchers can use de-identified real-world evidence in their regulatory submissions.  This framework aims to streamline the approval process by allowing scientists to incorporate diverse data sources while maintaining strict patient privacy standards.  Click the link to see how these updated data standards could accelerate your next clinical breakthrough: https://bit.ly/4ePNct7

Breast cancer relapse can occur decades after patients are declared cancer-free, particularly in estrogen receptor-positive disease, where long-term risk remains a major clinical challenge. A new study from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research suggests this may be driven by a population of slow-cycling, therapy-tolerant cancer cells that persist under hormone therapy while retaining the ability to spread. Excitingly, the work also points to a potential way to target this state. Learn more: https://bit.ly/49z1Z80

The stories everyone’s talking about this week include FDA leadership changes, pharma deals, clinical trials, and more! Check out DDN’s Weekly Rundown ⬇️

Standard PCR can measure how much residual DNA is present in rAAV products, but not whether it’s fragmented or intact.  Join this webinar on May 21, featuring David Dobnik and Emily Blair, PhD, to explore how single-molecule PCR approaches enable deeper insight into DNA impurity integrity and what that means for quality control workflows.  Register here: https://bit.ly/4wJBxTk Sponsored by Countable Labs