Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has picked Er­i­ca Schwartz, a for­mer deputy sur­geon gen­er­al and Coast Guard vet­er­an, to be the next CDC di­rec­tor — a like­ly for­ti­fy­ing pick af­ter a year of near-con­stant in­sta­bil­i­ty for the agency.

Trump said in a Truth So­cial post Thurs­day that Schwartz “is a STAR!” Long­time pub­lic health pro­fes­sion­als agreed, ap­plaud­ing the pick in so­cial me­dia posts. The CDC has been with­out per­ma­nent lead­er­ship for al­most the en­tire­ty of Trump's sec­ond term, dur­ing which the child­hood vac­cine sched­ule was over­hauled, an­ti-vac­cine ad­vo­cates were giv­en key posts, and the agency head­quar­ters was at­tacked. With Schwartz as the new pick for di­rec­tor, in­fec­tious dis­ease ex­perts and pub­lic health pro­fes­sion­als fi­nal­ly ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion.

Bio­vac’s new vac­cine fac­to­ry in Cape Town, which is ex­pect­ed to make up to 400 mil­lion vac­cines per year, has se­cured fi­nanc­ing from the Eu­ro­pean In­vest­ment Bank, the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion and the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance Cor­po­ra­tion.

The to­tal cost of the fa­cil­i­ty will be $180 mil­lion, Bio­vac’s CEO More­na Makhoana told End­points News in an email. The fac­to­ry will be lo­cat­ed at Bio­vac's cam­pus in Pinelands, Cape Town.

The fa­cil­i­ty will ini­tial­ly make oral cholera vac­cines and will ex­pand in­to po­lio, pneu­mo­nia and menin­gi­tis vac­cines. Once com­plet­ed, the site will pro­duce be­tween 30 and 40 mil­lion cholera vac­cine dos­es per year, which will ad­dress around 40% of the glob­al cholera vac­cine sup­ply gap.

On Fri­day, Kail­era Ther­a­peu­tics raised a record-set­ting $625 mil­lion through an IPO on the Nas­daq. Found­ed with back­ing from Bain Cap­i­tal Life Sci­ences, and a pipeline of obe­si­ty as­sets from Chi­na's Hen­grui Phar­ma, the com­pa­ny could be one of the best case stud­ies of what biotech looks like in 2026.

Kail­er­a's new shares KL­RA be­gan trad­ing Fri­day af­ter­noon, and quick­ly gained more than 50%. End­points News Ex­ec­u­tive Ed­i­tor Drew Arm­strong in­ter­viewed CEO Ron Re­naud just a few hours pri­or, and they talked about build­ing the com­pa­ny, part­ner­ing with Chi­na and what Re­naud thinks the IPO tells us about where the sec­tor is go­ing.

This in­ter­view has been edit­ed and con­densed for clar­i­ty.

Drew Arm­strong: Af­ter a few pret­ty gloomy years in biotech, in­vestors seem re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed right now. What changed?

The on­col­o­gy field is buzzing af­ter a land­mark read­out from Rev­o­lu­tion Med­i­cines, known col­lo­qui­al­ly as RevMed, showed that a tar­get­ed "pan-RAS" drug dou­bled the sur­vival time for pa­tients whose pan­cre­at­ic can­cer has re­turned or stopped re­spond­ing to pre­vi­ous treat­ment. As can­cer re­searchers and drug­mak­ers head to San Diego this week­end for the an­nu­al AACR meet­ing, here’s what we’re watch­ing:

→ RevMed will be re­port­ing more da­ta at AACR, both on its drug darax­on­ra­sib as well as an­oth­er KRAS-tar­get­ed ther­a­py zoldon­ra­sib. The Phase 1/2 darax­on­ra­sib read­out will give an up­dat­ed look at how the drug fares as a first-line treat­ment in metasta­t­ic pan­cre­at­ic can­cer, both alone and along­side chemother­a­py. Rev­o­lu­tion Med­i­cines re­port­ed an ini­tial cut of da­ta in the first-line set­ting last year, show­ing over­all re­sponse rates of 47% and 55% alone and with chemother­a­py re­spec­tive­ly.

While Eli Lil­ly’s tirzepatide helps pa­tients drop more weight than No­vo Nordisk’s semaglu­tide, this might come with greater loss in lean body mass, ac­cord­ing to a new study await­ing peer re­view.

The analy­sis, shared as a