Germany's GPC Biotech has taken a frugal and tortuous journey from platform to product company. As the customer base for its new-target discovery platform grew less receptive, it attempted to move its business towards products, but was prevented by its lack of management and its illiquid Neuer Markt shares. Thus it leveraged its Bristol-Myers connections to build an oncology team and create a pipeline, at the same time largely refocusing the company on in-licensing. In the meantime, rather than disbanding its discovery work, GPC is trying to reorient its entire platform towards applied uses in order to attract corporate funding and to feed its own pipeline. The result: a business model increasingly relevant to a financially troubled and largely directionless biotech industry.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has agreed to provide national Medicare coverage for mitral valve transcatheter edge-to-edge repair under a new coverage with evidence development policy. See what Neil Moat, chief medical officer for Abbott’s structural heart business, said about it here.

South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety and Taiwan’s Food and Drug Administration will transition from ICCR observers to full members, joining regulatory authorities from the US, Europe, Japan, Canada and Brazil. PCPC’s Francine Lamoriello, EVP of global affairs, discusses.