Pro­tag­o­nist Ther­a­peu­tics will soon re­ceive a sig­nif­i­cant amount of cash.

Pro­tag­o­nist will opt out of its prof­it-shar­ing deal with Take­da on a rare dis­ease drug, the biotech an­nounced Wednes­day, en­ti­tling it to a one-time $400 mil­lion pay­ment. Pro­tag­o­nist will now al­so be el­i­gi­ble for an­oth­er $975 mil­lion in mile­stones, more than half of which could be due by the end of 2026.

The deal cen­tered around a drug called rus­fer­tide, de­vel­oped by Pro­tag­o­nist and li­censed to Take­da for $300 mil­lion in 2024. Rus­fer­tide is de­signed to treat a rare blood dis­or­der known as poly­cythemia ve­ra, which leads to the ex­ces­sive pro­duc­tion of red blood cells. The most com­mon treat­ment is fre­quent blood-let­ting pro­ce­dures known as phle­botomies.

Rus­fer­tide suc­ceed­ed in a Phase 3 study last year, and the com­pa­nies filed for ap­proval in the fi­nal days of De­cem­ber.

Plus, news about Boehringer In­gel­heim, Sit­ryx Ther­a­peu­tics, Ar­genx, Palvel­la Ther­a­peu­tics, Vir Biotech­nol­o­gy, Lari­mar Ther­a­peu­tics, Bris­tol My­ers Squibb and Sys­tIm­mune:

📉 AtaiBeck­ley re­leas­es Phase 2a da­ta, stock falls: The com­pa­ny said its drug EMP-01, an oral R-MD­MA pro­gram, achieved its pri­ma­ry goal of safe­ty and tol­er­a­bil­i­ty in in­di­vid­u­als with so­cial anx­i­ety dis­or­der. On ef­fi­ca­cy, pa­tients saw their symp­toms de­crease by an av­er­age of 28.53 points on a com­pos­ite score, com­pared to a 16.67-point re­duc­tion in those on place­bo. The dif­fer­ence be­tween the two arms re­sult­ed in a “one-tailed” p-val­ue of 0.036. (Typ­i­cal­ly, p-val­ues are two-sided.) AtaiBeck­ley’s stock ATAI fell by as much as 17% in Thurs­day morn­ing trad­ing. — Max Gel­man

For the fifth year run­ning, End­points News will high­light the biotech lead­ers who are open­ing doors for peo­ple in the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty. Nom­i­na­tions are now open for the 2026 edi­tion of the LGBTQ+ Lead­ers in Bio­phar­ma spe­cial re­port.

Each year, we pro­file about a dozen LGBTQ+ sci­en­tists, drug de­vel­op­ment ex­ec­u­tives, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal lead­ers, in­vestors and oth­er fig­ures cen­tral to the cre­ation of new med­i­cines. These cap­tains al­so con­tribute to the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty and oth­er groups out­side of their day jobs.

This year’s edi­tion comes as the en­vi­ron­ment in the US for the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ues to wors­en. The Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union tracked 510 an­ti-LGBTQ bills in the US dur­ing the 2023 leg­isla­tive ses­sion. That rose to 533 in 2024 and 616 i