Am­gen abrupt­ly pulled out of a col­lab­o­ra­tion for a lead­ing drug in its im­munol­o­gy pipeline on Fri­day, send­ing the as­set back to its part­ner ahead of an FDA sub­mis­sion lat­er this year.

Am­gen ter­mi­nat­ed its part­ner­ship with Ky­owa Kirin for ro­catin­limab, the com­pa­nies an­nounced, which was be­ing stud­ied in eczema, asth­ma and oth­er im­muno­log­ic con­di­tions. "This busi­ness de­ci­sion is the re­sult of a strate­gic port­fo­lio pri­or­i­ti­za­tion by Am­gen," a Fri­day re­lease states.

The de­ci­sion comes as “some­what of a sur­prise,” ac­cord­ing to William Blair an­a­lyst Matt Phipps. It al­so marks a shift for Am­gen’s im­munol­o­gy am­bi­tions. Am­gen al­ready has mul­ti­ple block­buster im­munol­o­gy drugs, name­ly En­brel, Ote­zla and Tezspire, but com­pa­ny ex­ec­u­tives had po­si­tioned ro­catin­limab as a po­ten­tial next-gen­er­a­tion win­ner.

Quince Ther­a­peu­tic­s' once-month­ly steroid-based treat­ment failed a Phase 3 tri­al for a rare ge­net­ic con­di­tion called atax­ia-telang­iec­ta­sia, prompt­ing the Bay Area com­pa­ny to say it would stop de­vel­op­ment of the ex­per­i­men­tal prod­uct.

Thurs­day's an­nounce­ment wal­loped the com­pa­ny's shares QNCX, which were down more than 90% on Fri­day morn­ing com­pared with Wednes­day's close.

Quince’s ther­a­py, called eD­SP, in­volves a ma­chine that us­es some of a pa­tient’s own blood, en­cap­su­lat­ing the steroid dex­am­etha­sone in­to blood cells that are then ad­min­is­tered back to the pa­tient. The ap­proach was meant to mit­i­gate the side ef­fects of dai­ly steroid treat­ment.

How­ev­er, in a Phase 3 study with 105 pa­tients, Quince’s treat­ment did not sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prove scores at six months com­pared to place­bo on a mea­sure of dis­ease called the RmI­CARS. The mea­sure pri­mar­i­ly ex­am­ined a pa­tient’s pos­ture and gait. Quince said that the dif­fer­ence in av­er­age change in the two arms on the RmI­CARS was -1.30, with a p-val­ue of 0.0851.

Eli Lil­ly has bud­get­ed $3.5 bil­lion for a new weight loss in­jectable and de­vice fac­to­ry in Lehigh Val­ley, PA, which will man­u­fac­ture its next-gen obe­si­ty drug re­ta­tru­tide.

The fac­to­ry will al­so pro­duce oth­er weight loss med­i­cines and cre­ate 850 jobs, the drug­mak­er said Fri­day. Con­struc­tion is ex­pect­ed to start this year and the site will be op­er­a­tional in 2031.

Re­ta­tru­tide is a triple-G drug, mean­ing it tar­gets GIP, GLP-1 and glucagon re­cep­tors. It is in mul­ti­ple Phase 3 tri­als, with Lil­ly re­port­ing da­ta from one of these stud­ies in De­cem­ber. Lil­ly is ex­pect­ed to an­nounce sev­en ad­di­tion­al late-stage read­outs this year.

Lil­ly’s block­buster weight loss in­jec­tion tirzepatide is a GIP/GLP-1 re­cep­tor ag­o­nist.