Shares CRDF of Cardiff On­col­o­gy fell more than 30% af­ter the biotech dis­closed mixed Phase 2 da­ta and an­nounced the de­par­ture of two of its top ex­ec­u­tives.

San Diego-based Cardiff re­port­ed Tues­day that it se­lect­ed a dose of its col­orec­tal can­cer treat­ment on­va­nsert­ib to take in­to piv­otal tri­als. It said new da­ta on a 30 mg dose showed an im­prove­ment in con­firmed re­sponse rates over the com­bi­na­tion of two stan­dard-of-care reg­i­mens. But those da­ta were not sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant, and the 20 mg re­sponse rates were in line with the stan­dard of care.

Each of the two arms test­ing the drug had not yet reached me­di­an pro­gres­sion-free sur­vival. Still, Cardiff pre­sent­ed PFS haz­ard ra­tios against the com­bined stan­dard of care that showed a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit in the 30 mg arm.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion's Cen­ters for Medicare & Med­ic­aid Ser­vices is look­ing to in­cen­tivize hos­pi­tals to buy more do­mes­ti­cal­ly-pro­duced drugs.

Un­der a pro­posed rule, hos­pi­tals pur­chas­ing more than 50% of do­mes­tic-made es­sen­tial med­i­cines and ac­tive phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­gre­di­ents would re­ceive ad­di­tion­al pay­ments from Medicare, po­ten­tial­ly to the tune of hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars.

CM­S' rule­mak­ing, pub­lished Mon­day evening, of­fers an ex­am­ple of a hos­pi­tal with to­tal drug costs of about $2 mil­lion, with es­sen­tial med­i­cines rep­re­sent­ing an es­ti­mat­ed 1% of those costs. If do­mes­tic es­sen­tial med­i­cines are about 12 times more cost­ly than ones that are for­eign-made, that hos­pi­tal would re­ceive an ad­di­tion­al Medicare pay­ment of $240,000.

Unit­ed­Health Group’s turn­around plan to trade mem­ber­ship for im­proved prof­it mar­gins will re­sult in low­er rev­enue in 2026, as the health­care gi­ant at­tempts to re­cov­er from a dis­as­trous pe­ri­od of set­backs that crip­pled its val­ue.

The com­pa­ny re­port­ed Tues­day that it ex­pects rev­enue to dip 2% to more than $439 bil­lion this year af­ter slash­ing ben­e­fits and ex­it­ing plans led to mil­lions of few­er mem­bers. But those cuts should re­turn Unit­ed­Health to sol­id foot­ing, com­pa­ny of­fi­cials promised, with earn­ings from op­er­a­tions of more than $24 bil­lion and a mar­gin of 5.5%. Unit­ed­Health’s stock plunged rough­ly 20% on the out­look.

Still, the turn­around could be com­pli­cat­ed by CMS’ pro­pos­al to keep Medicare Ad­van­tage rates rel­a­tive­ly flat for 2027 at .09%, com­pared to last year’s fi­nal pay bump of around 5%. The pro­posed 2027 rate caused in­sur­er stocks to drop in af­ter-hours trad­ing Mon­day. Unit­ed­Health of­fi­cials warned that the pro­posed rates would lead to ben­e­fit cuts for se­niors.

Roche’s most ad­vanced obe­si­ty drug al­lowed pa­tients in a Phase 2 tri­al who took it for near­ly a year to lose 18.3% of their weight af­ter cor­rect­ing for place­bo, the Swiss phar­ma said Tues­day.

This is a lit­tle bet­ter than the weight loss seen with the most ef­fec­tive ap­proved obe­si­ty drug, Eli Lil­ly’s Zep­bound, at the same point. Roche is putting its can­di­date, called CT-388, in­to a Phase 3 pro­gram.

How­ev­er, sev­er­al oth­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al shots have ex­ceed­ed this weight loss bench­mark on a cross-tri­al ba­sis, and Roche could have trou­ble carv­ing out mar­ket share if and when CT-388 even­tu­al­ly reach­es the mar­ket. Jef­feries an­a­lysts wrote in a same-day note that “by the time CT-388 is through the mar­ket will like­ly be frag­ment­ed with on­go­ing com­pet­i­tive pres­sure amongst un­dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed as­sets.”

Boehringer In­gel­heim will pair up with Sim­cere Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in one of the hottest tar­gets in im­munol­o­gy.

For €42 mil­lion ($50 mil­lion) up­front, the Ger­man phar­ma will tap in­to Sim­cere's pre­clin­i­cal TL1Ax­IL-23p19 bis­pe­cif­ic an­ti­body for in­flam­ma­to­ry bow­el dis­ease, Sim­cere said in a Hong Kong Stock Ex­change fil­ing on Tues­day. The as­set is co­de­named SIM0709.

Boehringer said in vi­vo an­i­mal stud­ies showed SIM0709 had "su­pe­ri­or syn­er­gis­tic ef­fi­ca­cy, even out­per­form­ing the com­bi­na­tion of the two cor­re­spond­ing monother­a­pies," re­fer­ring to block­ing of TL1A and IL-23.

TL1A be­came one of the most prized next-gen­er­a­tion tar­gets in IBD a few years ago, when Mer­ck and Roche both inked multi­bil­lion-dol­lar ac­qui­si­tions. Oth­er phar­ma com­pa­nies have fol­lowed.

Boehringer is on the hook for a to­tal biobucks pack­age of up to €1.016 bil­lion ($1.2 bil­lion) for ex-Chi­na rights to SIM0709.