CMS said Medicare will cover anti-amyloid antibodies for early Alzheimer’s disease upon traditional approval from the US FDA if prescribed by doctors participating in a patient registry. 

Through partnerships with Bicycle and Metagenomi, Ionis is working on new chemistries and novel medicines. It is also expanding manufacturing capacity to enable its scientific growth.

Ionis will launch its first commercial product through a co-commercialization agreement with AstraZeneca early next year, in preparation for its first wholly-owned drug launches soon to follow.

Private Company Edition: Two companies raised multiple hundreds of millions of dollars each helping to keep the number of $100m-plus venture capital mega-rounds on the rise in May. Also, Ascend raised $132.5m to make gene and cell therapies, and Nido emerged with $109m for neurological diseases.

ElevateBio closed a series D venture capital round and revealed a potentially multibillion-dollar deal between its Life Edit subsidiary and Novo Nordisk as demand for its cell and gene therapy capabilities grow.

ReNAgade Therapeutics came out of stealth mode with $300m to fund its proprietary technology for delivery of RNA medicines – including coding, editing and gene insertion modalities – beyond the liver.