Colorado Court Temporarily Blocks Nexstar and Tegna Merger
Catch up on the weekend's top five stories with this list compiled by The Fly: 1) Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser announced on X Friday night that the judge in the state's case challenging the Nexstar (NXST) - Tegna merger issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the companies from merging. On April 7, the judge will consider the request to bar the merger "while we make our case to stop it permanently," Weiser added. U.S. District Judge Troy Nunley sided with DirecTV, which claimed that Nexstar's acquisition of Tegna would "drive up the price it can extract from DirecTV and other distributors," bring layoffs and reduce competition. DirecTV established "a likelihood of success on the merits" on its claim, and that moving forward with the transaction would create "irreparable harm," the judge wrote. Eight states sued to block the merger in a separate filing on the same day as DirecTV's. 2) Insilico Medicine announced a drug discovery collaboration with Eli Lilly and Company (LLY) that uses Insilico's AI engine to accelerate the discovery and development of novel therapeutics across multiple therapeutic areas. The agreement grants Lilly an exclusive worldwide license for the development, manufacturing, and commercialization of potentially best-in-class, novel oral therapeutics in preclinical development for certain indications. In addition, Insilico and Lilly will collaborate on multiple R&D programs focused on targets selected by Lilly, by combining Insilico's state-of-the-art Pharma.AI platforms with Lilly's development capabilities and deep disease-area expertise. Under the terms of the agreement, Insilico is eligible to receive an $115 million upfront payment, followed by development, regulatory, and commercial milestones that could bring the total deal value to approximately $2.75 billion, plus tiered royalties on future sales. 3) Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY) announced positive data from the Phase 3 Scout-HCM trial of Camzyos, the first study of a cardiac myosin inhibitor in adolescents with symptomatic obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The Scout-HCM trial met its primary endpoint, demonstrating a clinically meaningful and statistically significant reduction from baseline in Valsalva left ventricular outflow tract gradient at Week 28 with Camzyos versus placebo. 4) Eli Lilly and Company announced detailed results from the Together-PsA open-label Phase 3b clinical trial evaluating the concomitant use of Taltz and Zepbound compared to Taltz alone in adults with active psoriatic arthritis and obesity or overweight with at least one additional weight-related comorbid condition. At the primary endpoint of 36 weeks, treatment with concomitant Taltz and Zepbound met the primary and all key secondary endpoints for statistically significant superiority to Taltz monotherapy. 5) Boston Scientific (BSX) announced that the Champion-AF global clinical trial met all primary and secondary safety and efficacy endpoints. The study evaluated the Watchman FLX Left Atrial Appendage Closure, LAAC, Device compared to non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants, NOACs, as a first-line option for stroke risk reduction in a broad population of patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation, NVAF. At 36 months: The primary safety endpoint was met with data demonstrating the WATCHMAN FLX device was statistically superior to NOACs for non-procedural major and clinically relevant non-major bleeding, achieving a 45% relative reduction in non-procedural bleeding risk.
