Richard Paz­dur does­n't re­gret re­sign­ing back in De­cem­ber as di­rec­tor of the FDA's drug cen­ter, just weeks af­ter tak­ing the role.

Paz­dur, who spent more than two decades lead­ing the agen­cy's can­cer drug re­views, left the post of Cen­ter for Drug Eval­u­a­tion and Re­search di­rec­tor abrupt­ly. In an in­ter­view with End­points News, he point­ed to sev­er­al is­sues with FDA Com­mis­sion­er Mar­ty Makary's pri­or­i­ties and specif­i­cal­ly high­light­ed the un­prece­dent­ed po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the FDA's drug re­views.

The fire­wall be­tween each ad­min­is­tra­tion's po­lit­i­cal ap­pointees like Makary and the fed­er­al em­ploy­ees car­ry­ing out the drug re­views has ce­ment­ed the FDA as the lead­ing reg­u­la­tor in the world. But since the sec­ond Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion took of­fice, Paz­dur said, po­lit­i­cal ap­pointees have ex­pand­ed from the com­mis­sion­er lev­el to the cen­ter di­rec­tor lev­el. Po­lit­i­cal ap­pointees are now more com­mon­ly over­rul­ing re­view teams. Paz­dur not­ed that this is the first time in his FDA ca­reer in which a com­mis­sion­er called him to dis­cuss a spe­cif­ic ap­pli­ca­tion.

The FDA is tak­ing the first step to­ward po­ten­tial­ly back­ing pop­u­lar pep­tides, con­ven­ing ad­vi­sors to dis­cuss whether a hand­ful of prod­ucts should be giv­en the go-ahead for com­pound­ing in the US.

A meet­ing of the agency’s Phar­ma­cy Com­pound­ing Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee has been sched­uled for Ju­ly 23 and 24, ac­cord­ing to a Fed­er­al Reg­is­ter no­tice re­leased Wednes­day morn­ing. The com­mit­tee will dis­cuss whether some bulk sub­stances should be added to a list that com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies are re­quired to stick to when mak­ing drug prod­ucts.

Two of the pep­tides un­der dis­cus­sion — BPC-157 and TB-500 — are among the most well-known. The com­bi­na­tion is called the “Wolver­ine stack” and has been billed as a treat­ment to help with re­cov­ery, re­pair and in­flam­ma­tion. Ac­cord­ing to the fed­er­al no­tice, the ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee will dis­cuss com­pound­ing of BPC-157 to treat ul­cer­a­tive col­i­tis and TB-500 for wound heal­ing.

Biotech stocks are back at it.

The XBI is up more than 30% in the last six months, out­pac­ing the broad­er S&P 500 by more than 24 per­cent­age points — one of the sharpest stretch­es of out­per­for­mance in a decade.

To­day's chart shows the mar­ket emerg­ing from a month of un­cer­tain­ty dri­ven by the war in Iran. Biotech stocks, with their out­sized sen­si­tiv­i­ty to in­vestor sen­ti­ment, fell al­most 7% af­ter the US and Is­rael start­ed their bomb­ing cam­paign in Iran on Feb. 28. But those loss­es re­versed on March 31, fol­low­ing re­ports that the US was seek­ing to wind down mil­i­tary hos­til­i­ties. Since then, the XBI is up 14%.

The start of 2026 has shaped up as an ex­ten­sion of the sol­id per­for­mance we tracked with Deal­For­ma’s Chris Doko­ma­ji­lar through the sec­ond half of last year. Deal­mak­ing con­tin­ued apace, ven­ture cap­i­tal is re­cov­er­ing, and Asia stayed out front as the lead­ing re­gion for li­cens­ing pacts.

Chi­nese biotechs, which seized the spot­light on deals last year, start­ed out 2026 hot­ter than ever. Phar­ma com­pa­nies ea­ger to ex­pand their pipelines have tak­en ad­van­tage of Chi­na's drug labs, which have been quick to fol­low R&D trends.

VCs, mean­while, re­grouped around lat­er-stage as­sets, chas­ing the wind­fall re­turns that shape R&D in many re­spects.

Rev­o­lu­tion Med­i­cines is cap­i­tal­iz­ing on its re­cent clin­i­cal tri­al suc­cess, putting to­geth­er the biotech in­dus­try’s largest pub­lic raise since the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.

The com­pa­ny priced its stock and debt of­fer­ing at $2 bil­lion, dou­bling the amount it ex­pect­ed to raise af­ter a Phase 3 win in pan­cre­at­ic can­cer. The colos­sal fig­ure comes as the XBI, biotech’s close­ly watched in­dus­try barom­e­ter, topped $135 on Tues­day — its high­est point since the sum­mer of 2021, when pan­dem­ic-era vibes still dom­i­nat­ed.

Over the last six months, the XBI has risen 29.1%, com­pared to a 4.9% in­crease in the S&P 500. It's been pow­ered by a wave of pub­lic of­fer­ings and height­ened M&A ac­tiv­i­ty. Along with Rev­o­lu­tion, Spyre Ther­a­peu­tics and Al­lo­gene Ther­a­peu­tics al­so put to­geth­er rais­es this week, pric­ing theirs at $403 mil­lion and $175 mil­lion, re­spec­tive­ly.