Pharmaceutical Executive Daily: Shionogi Receives Contract Through BARDA's Project BioShield

Welcome to Pharmaceutical Executive Daily, your quick briefing on the top news shaping the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry.

In today's Pharmaceutical Executive Daily, Shionogi receives a contract worth up to $482 million to bolster U.S. preparedness against drug-resistant bacterial threats, Roche and C4 Therapeutics expand their long-standing partnership into a new collaboration to develop degrader-antibody conjugates for oncology, and Pharmaceutical Executive profiles AstraZeneca CFO Aradhana Sarin on how she approaches the role as a strategic catalyst for growth.

Shionogi's U.S. subsidiary has been awarded a contract through BARDA's Project BioShield tied to Fetroja, which targets difficult-to-treat gram-negative bacterial infections and high-priority biothreat pathogens. The contract is initially funded at $119 million with multiyear options that could bring the total to $482 million, and will support establishing a U.S.-based drug product manufacturing facility for Fetroja, procurement of the antibiotic, and expanded development of the drug against biothreat pathogens including Burkholderia pseudomallei and Yersinia pestis.

Roche and C4 Therapeutics have entered into a new collaboration marking the third between the two companies, to discover and develop degrader-antibody conjugates, an emerging oncology modality that combines the targeted protein degradation approach of C4T's Torpedo platform with Roche's antibody-drug conjugate expertise. Under the agreement, C4T will design degrader payloads for two undisclosed oncology targets, with Roche selecting and conjugating the antibodies and leading preclinical, clinical, and commercial development.

Finally, Pharmaceutical Executive sits down with Aradhana Sarin, Executive Director and CFO of AstraZeneca, on the expanding role of the finance function in driving biopharma strategy. Sarin, who trained as a physician before transitioning to investment banking and then to biopharma leadership, discusses how the modern CFO must function as a strategic thought partner across R&D investment, capital allocation, and enterprise transformation, not simply as a financial steward.

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