February 24, 2025

Dr. Frank Peacock and Dr. Damon R. Kuehl join BioTalk for a focused discussion on one of emergency medicine’s most persistent challenges: accurately diagnosing and predicting outcomes in mild traumatic brain injury. As Scientific Advisory Board members for BrainBox Solutions, Inc., they walk through what happens when a patient presents to the emergency department after a fall or sports injury and why current tools, including CT scans, often leave clinicians without clear answers. The conversation explores the gap between a “normal” scan and ongoing symptoms, and what missed or uncertain diagnoses can mean for patients weeks later.



Gilead Sciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: GILD) today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Arcellx (Nasdaq: ACLX) for $115 per share in cash at closing and one contingent value right of $5 per share, which represents an implied equity value of $7.8 billion payable at closing. Arcellx is a biotechnology company focused on delivering a new class of innovative immunotherapies for patients with cancer and other incurable diseases.

Kite, a Gilead company, and Arcellx have an existing collaboration to co-develop and co-commercialize Arcellx’s lead pipeline candidate, anitocabtagene autoleucel (anito-cel), an investigational BCMA-directed CAR T-cell therapy for patients with multiple myeloma.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) just released its assessment of the Biden Administration’s “Draft Interagency Guidance Framework for Considering the Exercise of March-In Rights.” A bipartisan combination of Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chris Coons (D-DE) along with Congressmen Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) asked the GAO to evaluate the guidelines on three bases: what the guidelines did and how they were developed; stakeholder views on the draft; and the potential impact of the guidelines.

The report whiffs on all three.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Nasdaq: VNDA) today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved BYSANTI™ (milsaperidone) tablets, a first line therapy for the acute treatment of manic or mixed episodes associated with bipolar I disorder and for the treatment of schizophrenia in adults.

BYSANTI™ is a new chemical entity (NCE) that belongs in the class of atypical antipsychotics. In clinical studies BYSANTI™ demonstrated bioequivalence to iloperidone across the therapeutic dosing spectrum enabling it to leverage well-established knowledge of efficacy and safety derived from a rich...

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), today announced the launch of its Critical Illness Immunological Reprogramming and Control Point Learning Engine (CIRCLE) program, a leading-edge initiative to better track the body’s immune response during critical illness so care clinicians can personalize treatments and save lives.  

Critical illness impacts more than 7 million Americans annually and can be caused by a variety of factors, from infections to severe injuries to chronic disease. These life-threatening conditions require stay in an intensive care unit (ICU) and lead to high morbidity and mortality among Americans—in some cases as high as 30%. The body’s immune response is pivotal in fighting disease; however, when immune and inflammatory responses go into overdrive these normally beneficial mechanisms can lead to worse health outcomes, like organ failure and death. 

As we conclude our Optimizing Launch Messaging series, we’ve explored how to create clear, targeted, and evidence-based messages. For our final insight, we’re focusing on a tool that’s rapidly changing the communication landscape: artificial intelligence. We’ll focus on generative AI here, and similar lessons can apply to agentic AI down the road.

Insight 7: Engage the power of AI in message optimization

When preparing for launch (or really any high-stakes communication) the strongest messages come from a partnership between humans and AI. Here’s the workflow we recommend:

A. Workshop the message development 🧠

Bring your teams together early to outline goals, target audiences, and the strategic backbone of your message.

B. Invite AI to that workshop 🤖

Baltimore-based b.well Connected Health has partnered with OpenAI to power a new feature from the artificial intelligence company that allows people to connect medical records to ChatGPT.

Under the partnership, announced earlier this month, OpenAi will use b.well's new software to allow ChatGPT to examine medical information and produce more personalized responses regarding users’ health. The deal highlights a shift toward modernizing health care technology, while giving consumers more control of how they use personal health data.

The local digital health company will streamline a health data network that pulls medical records from 2.2 million providers and 320 health plans and labs into one place for consumers to access their personal health data. The company has seen surging growth, with its revenue more than doubling from $6.67 million in 2022 to $14.22 million in 2024, making b.well one of the fastest-growing firms in the region last year.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, mRNA technology saved lives by shortening vaccine development from several years to a matter of months. Unlocking the capabilities of mRNA, or messenger RNA, has since brought forth exciting new developments in biotechnology—including potential applications in national security.

As artificial intelligence advances and adversaries invest heavily in building their capabilities, the United States faces new a new range of potential threats involving biotechnology. This has caught the attention of Congress, which established the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB) to explore strategies to advance U.S. biotech development to “address the national security and defense needs” of the country. Yet despite its promise, mRNA technology faces major roadblocks in the U.S. today. Most recently, the Food and Drug Administration refused to review Moderna’s application for a new mRNA flu vaccine.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Danaher Corporation (NYSE: DHR), a global science and technology innovator, announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Masimo Corporation (NASDAQ: MASI) a leading specialty diagnostics provider of pulse oximetry and other patient monitoring solutions, primarily in acute care settings. Under the terms of the agreement, Danaher will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Masimo common stock for $180 per share in cash, or a total enterprise value of approximately $9.9 billion including assumed indebtedness and net of acquired cash. This represents a transaction multiple of approximately 18x estimated 2027 EBITDA, or 15x 2027 estimated EBITDA including the full benefit of expected annual synergies1.

Rainer M. Blair, President and Chief Executive Officer, Danaher, said: "We are excited to welcome the Masimo team to Danaher. We've followed this innovative company for many years and see it as an exceptional strategic fit for Danaher. Masimo is a leader in pulse oximetry and other patient monitoring solutions, which combined with its trusted...

Whisper it, but we may finally be seeing the IPO window reopening in 2026.

Biotech listings saw their heyday in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, when an incredible 87 U.S.-based drug developers surfed a wave of goodwill from generalist investors onto the public markets in 2021. That interest subsided to an annual average of closer to 20 listings by U.S. biotechs until 2025—when the number of IPOs sunk to a nadir of just 11, according to data from Pitchbook.

But the mood music seems to have changed in the early weeks of 2026, with a steady stream of biopharmas lining up to ring the Nasdaq bell.

Aktis Oncology set the tone in the early days of January, raking in $318 million via an upsized offering that the company will use to fund early-phase clinical trials of its two lead radiopharmaceutical candidates.

“We could feel the shift in the appetite for IPOs in November [and] December,” Aktis CEO Matthew Roden, Ph.D., told Fierce.

A new University of Maryland startup takes aim at one of biotechnology’s most consequential infrastructure gaps: the inability to reliably design around RNA structure. RNA is rapidly emerging as a powerful means of intervention in biology—enabling therapies that silence, edit or activate genes beyond the reach of traditional protein-targeted drugs, including noncoding genomic regions implicated in disease.

Designing RNAs and compounds that interact with them, however, is a difficult task. RNA molecules fold into diverse and dynamic three-dimensional shapes that are persistently difficult to predict and interpret. That structural uncertainty has become a major bottleneck for the field.

The College Park, Md.-based startup Emergente was formed to remove that bottleneck. Rather than building a single therapeutic asset, the company is developing foundational infrastructure that its co-founders call the “picks and shovels” powering...

Maryland continues to cement itself as one of the most dynamic regions for entrepreneurship in life sciences, biotechnology, and technology. With a growing talent pool, strong research institutions, and an ecosystem that values collaboration, the state offers more than just space for new companies, it creates fertile ground for them to flourish.

A Community Built for Entrepreneurs

For many founders, the challenge of building a company isn’t just raising capital, it’s finding the right community. Chris Frew, Founder of BioBuzz Networks, emphasized this point in a conversation with Brian Jamieson, Founder and CEO of Diagnostic Biochips, a Maryland-based biosensor platform company. Both startups have received grants funded by TEDCO, highlighting how local support can help early-stage companies grow and thrive.

“Ecosystems are important, especially for entrepreneurs,” Frew says.

Bethesda, MD and Morristown, NJ, February 23, 2026 — Alvogen, a US-based wholly owned subsidiary of Lotus Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (TWSE: 1795) focused on developing, in-licensing, manufacturing and marketing pharmaceutical products, and Solaxa Inc., a biopharmaceutical public benefit corporation focused on rare neurological conditions, today announced a global license agreement covering the development and commercialization of SLX-100 for spinocerebellar ataxia type 27B (SCA27B) for global markets.

Under the terms of the agreement, Solaxa is entitled to receive an initial payment to support registrational studies in SCA27B, and is eligible to receive additional payments upon the achievement of certain development milestones, upon receipt of FDA approval for SLX-100, and based on reaching certain net sales thresholds, totaling up to $95 million in the aggregate.

Astek Diagnostics, developing diagnostics for rapid antibiotic sensitivity testing, today celebrates the publication of a peer-reviewed research article in PLOS One detailing the first-in-human evaluation of a novel rapid biomarker for urinary tract infection (UTI) diagnosis in people with neurogenic bladder dysfunction. The study, conducted by MedStar Health, shows that the urine resazurin reduction ratio (uRRR) correlates strongly with standard diagnostic indicators and delivers results within one hour.

The article, titled “Urine resazurin reduction ratio as a biomarker of urinary tract infection in people with neurogenic bladder: A first in human study,” was published in PLOS One. It represents a major milestone in Astek’s mission to transform infection diagnostics with faster, more actionable technologies.