Editor’s Briefing: October 16, 2026

In Short. Krystal Biotech reported that a gene-carrying virus shrank most skin cancers in three people with an inherited condition that causes them. Labcorp agreed to buy much of OPKO Health's testing business for $722m.

Krystal's injected virus shrinks skin cancers in a small pilot study

KRYSTAL BIOTECH reported on Thursday early results for KB113 in Gorlin syndrome, an inherited disorder in which people develop basal cell carcinomas, a common slow-growing skin cancer, throughout their lives. KB113 is a herpes virus altered so that it cannot copy itself. Injected into a tumor, it delivers genes for two immune signals, interleukin-2 and interleukin-12, meant to prompt the immune system to attack the cancer. Three adults received six doses over 14 weeks. According to the study poster, 69 of 83 tracked tumors, or 83%, had shrunk 30 days after the last dose, and 42 of 83 shrank by more than half. Tumors that were never injected also shrank, which suggests the immune response spread beyond the injection sites. One heavily shrunken tumor from each patient was biopsied, and none showed remaining cancer. All side effects were mild or moderate. With three patients and no comparison group, the study shows only that the approach is worth testing further.

Labcorp agrees to buy much of OPKO's testing business

OPKO HEALTH said on Thursday that Labcorp, one of America's largest laboratory companies, would buy the main parts of BioReference Health, OPKO's diagnostic-testing unit. The deal covers clinical and women's-health testing, urology, testing for prisons and more than 80 sites where patients give samples. It also includes the 4Kscore test, an FDA-approved blood test that estimates the chance that a man has aggressive prostate cancer before he decides on a biopsy. Labcorp will pay $722m in cash at closing, adjusted for the unit's revenue at that time, plus up to $150m over as long as ten years depending on sales of the 4Kscore test, according to OPKO's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Labcorp expects the business to bring in about $250m of revenue in its first year. The sale still needs antitrust clearance and other usual approvals.

The FDA sets a new decision date for Aquestive's allergy film

AQUESTIVE THERAPEUTICS said on Thursday that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), America's drug regulator, had accepted its resubmitted application for Anaphylm, a film placed under the tongue that releases a form of epinephrine, the drug used to stop anaphylaxis, a severe and sometimes fatal allergic reaction. The FDA turned down the first application in January with a complete response letter, a list of problems the company must fix before approval. Aquestive ran new studies of how people handle the film and how the drug enters the blood, then resubmitted on September 16th. The agency classed it as a Class 2 resubmission, the longer of its two review tracks, and set a decision date of March 16th 2027. Aquestive said Anaphylm would be the first epinephrine taken by mouth if approved. It plans to file in Canada before the end of this year.

ALX Oncology swaps shares held by its largest investors for warrants

ALX ONCOLOGY, which develops cancer drugs, agreed on October 14th to exchange 13.35m of its shares for the same number of pre-funded warrants. A pre-funded warrant is a right to receive a share for a token price, here $0.001, because the holder has already paid nearly the whole price. The warrants carry limits that stop any holder owning more than a set fraction of the company, here 4.99% or 9.99% of its shares. Funds affiliated with Blackstone, an investment firm, exchanged almost all of the shares, about 12.9m, with smaller amounts from venBio and RA Capital. The holders can turn the warrants back into shares at any time, subject to those limits, and the company said the exchange would settle on about October 15th.