The FDA un­veiled a new data­base that will ul­ti­mate­ly house all of the agency’s ad­verse event re­port­ing sys­tems, in­clud­ing a vac­cine side ef­fect track­er that’s co-run with the CDC.

The Ad­verse Event Mon­i­tor­ing Sys­tem (AEMS) in­cludes da­ta from three pre­ex­ist­ing sys­tems that span drugs, bi­o­log­ics, cos­met­ics, col­or ad­di­tives, vac­cines, an­i­mal drugs and an­i­mal food. An­oth­er three sys­tems will be meld­ed in by the end of May, cov­er­ing ad­verse events tied to med­ical de­vices, hu­man foods, di­etary sup­ple­ments and to­bac­co prod­ucts.

Lega­cy sys­tems will stay on­line un­til they mi­grate to AEMS, an HHS spokesper­son said. When asked whether the FDA will change what da­ta are col­lect­ed, the spokesper­son said that “da­ta col­lec­tion is the same for now.”

Evotec plans to close an­oth­er four sites and cut about a sixth of its staff amid a broad­er, mul­ti-year shake-up.

It’s the lat­est round of lay­offs for the Ger­man biotech and man­u­fac­tur­er, which has cut hun­dreds of em­ploy­ees over the last two years. The com­pa­ny al­so changed CEOs, shut­tered its gene ther­a­py unit, and closed five sites be­tween 2024 and 2025.

Evotec said Tues­day it will re­duce its foot­print to 10 fa­cil­i­ties. As a re­sult, the com­pa­ny ex­pects to elim­i­nate up to 800 po­si­tions. Last month, Evotec said it had rough­ly 4,800 glob­al em­ploy­ees.

Evotec’s CEO Chris­t­ian Wo­jczews­ki said in a news re­lease that the next phase of its re­or­ga­ni­za­tion will “po­si­tion the com­pa­ny for sus­tain­able, high-qual­i­ty growth.” The com­pa­ny ex­pects its plans will be “sub­stan­tial­ly im­ple­ment­ed by the end of 2027.”

Eli Lil­ly is mak­ing moves in East Asia.

The In­di­anapo­lis drug­mak­er said Wednes­day it is ear­mark­ing $3 bil­lion over the next decade to in­crease its man­u­fac­tur­ing foot­print in Chi­na. Ear­li­er this week, Lil­ly said it is in­vest­ing $500 mil­lion in South Ko­rea over the next five years through a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with the gov­ern­ment.

Lil­ly’s Chi­na bud­get will be used to boost lo­cal pro­duc­tion of its GLP-1 pill or­for­glipron and oth­er oral drugs. Or­for­glipron is un­der re­view by Chi­nese reg­u­la­tors for obe­si­ty and type 2 di­a­betes.

There are cur­rent­ly no GLP-1 weight loss pills avail­able in Chi­na, mean­ing Lil­ly could be the first to mar­ket there, with no re­ports of No­vo Nordisk fil­ing for ap­proval in the coun­try. No­vo’s Ry­bel­sus, which is an oral ver­sion of semaglu­tide, is ap­proved in Chi­na for type 2 di­a­betes.

For the sec­ond month in a row, it ap­pears For­bion and RA Cap­i­tal are the main back­ers be­hind a new biotech formed around an in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al drug in-li­censed from Chi­na.

Sol­stice On­col­o­gy was forced out of stealth last month when its part­ner Har­bour Bio­Med dis­closed it had out-li­censed an an­ti-CT­LA-4 med­i­cine to the start­up. At the time, Sol­stice was char­ac­ter­ized as re­ceiv­ing back­ing from "ma­jor ven­ture cap­i­tal in­vestors."

Now, a reg­u­la­to­ry fil­ing this week hints at a nine-fig­ure fundrais­ing haul for the Boston-based start­up. The fil­ing in­di­cates Sol­stice has got­ten $121 mil­lion so far from eight in­vestors in an up to $298 mil­lion fundraise.

The mon­ey will like­ly sup­port de­vel­op­ment of the clin­i­cal-stage can­cer drug and pay for part of the li­cens­ing deal. The Feb­ru­ary pact car­ried with it a $50 mil­lion up­front cash pay­ment from Sol­stice to Har­bour, a glob­al biotech with hubs in Chi­na, the US and the Nether­lands.