On May 13, 2025, Galapagos announced that its Board of Directors (the “Board”) had decided to explore all strategic alternatives for its cell therapy business (the “Cell Therapy Business”), including a potential divestiture of the Cell Therapy Business, with the goal of preserving shareholder value.
As part of its review of strategic alternatives, over the past number of months, the Board, through management and its financial advisors, contacted a broad group of both strategic and financial parties to assess their interest in acquiring the Cell Therapy Business. As part of this process, potential interested parties have had access to a comprehensive data room and confidential presentations on the business from the Galapagos management team.
To provide the market with an update on that process – as of today's date, the Board has received a limited number of non-binding offers from consortia, predominantly comprised of financial investors, to acquire the Cell Therapy Business. The Board and management continue to work with those potential bidders to finalize their due diligence and to explore whether they are able to raise the necessary financing commitments including, where appropriate, supporting their fundraising efforts. The deadline for potential bidders to put forward binding, fully-financed, offers for the Cell Therapy Business is in the coming weeks.
The Board expects to make a decision as to whether to continue with a divestment process of the Cell Therapy Business or pursue alternative courses of action promptly following receipt of those binding offers, if any. The Company expects to make an announcement on the outcome of the review of strategic alternatives for the Cell Therapy Business no later than November 5, 2025, with the release of its financial results for the third quarter.
GoodRx Holdings (NASDAQ:GDRX) stock surged 18% Wednesday after CEO Wendy Barnes suggested the digital healthcare platform could potentially partner with the Trump administration on its new drug pricing initiative.
In an interview on Fox Business, Barnes revealed that GoodRx has been having "conversations" with the Trump administration regarding efforts to deliver more affordable drug pricing. She noted that the government’s TrumpRx proposal would complement GoodRx’s existing business model, adding that the company could "perhaps partner" with the administration on the initiative.
The stock climbed as much as 27% during intraday trading before settling at an 18% gain by market close.
The comments from Barnes came just one day after President Donald Trump announced a comprehensive plan aimed at reducing prescription drug costs in the United States. The president’s initiative includes the creation of a "TrumpRx" direct-to-consumer website where Americans would be able to purchase medications at discounted prices, as well as a broad agreement with Pfizer to lower prices on many of its products.
GoodRx, which operates a platform helping consumers find discounted prices on prescription medications, appears well-positioned to potentially benefit from or collaborate with the administration’s new drug pricing efforts.
TheNational Transportation Safety Boardissued a stern warning toSEPTA on Wednesday, urging the transit agency to take immediate action due to fire risks in its fleet of Silverliner IV railcars.
The warning follows a series of fires this year on the following dates:
External (left) and internal (right) damage to railcar following Ridley Park fire.
NTSB
The NTSB said the outdated design of the railcars, combined with SEPTA's maintenance practices, "represents an immediate and unacceptable safety risk."
Investigators found that the safety issues cannot be fully addressed without a comprehensive retrofit or replacement of the fleet.
"The NTSB also found that SEPTA's current operating practices have failed to protect passengers and crews because defective railcars have been kept in passenger service," the federal agency stated on Wednesday. "Investigators said the recurrence of fires -- despite SEPTA's attempted fixes -- shows organizational lapses that block effective risk mitigation."
During a news conference on Wednesday, SEPTA GM Scott Sauer says the transit agency developed a comprehensive set of 40 mitigation measures in cooperation with the FRA and NTSB, which include additional notifications and safety checks, audible alarms for fault lights and personnel.
SEPTA GM urges Silverliner IV railcars are safe following safety warning
"Due to these efforts, we are confident that we can safely continue service with the Silverliner IV fleet," said Sauer.
New safety steps include in-person inspections for all trains going through the Center City stations and live video monitoring.
"We've been using the Silverliner Force less than the rest of the fleet, and we've instituted more frequent and thorough inspections," added Sauer.
Despite NTSB calling for the suspension of the Silverliner IV fleet until the root causes of the fires are identified, Sauer says he's confident the railcars are safe.
"We are also so confident that our mitigation efforts will allow us to maintain safe service for our customers moving forward," he added.
The full list of recommendations includes the following:
Suspend operation of the Silverliner IV fleet until the transit agency determines the root causes of fires, develops and implements a plan to address these causes and identifies and corrects the organizational factors that have prevented effective risk mitigations.
Implement a plan to monitor the success of its risk-mitigation approach to the Silverliner IV fleet, including provisions for immediately removing the fleet from service again if its mitigations fail to prevent fires.
Create an expedited procurement or retrofit schedule and seek funding from appropriate sources as soon as possible to accelerate the replacement of the Silverliner IV fleet or its retrofit to include modern feedback systems and meet federal fire safety standards for new railcars.
Vanda Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: VNDA) has reached a collaborative framework with the FDA to resolve multiple regulatory disputes regarding HETLIOZ® and tradipitant. The agreement includes expedited reviews of several key applications: the partial clinical hold on tradipitant for motion sickness by November 26, 2025, the NDA review with a PDUFA date of December 30, 2025, and the sNDA for HETLIOZ® for jet lag disorder by January 7, 2026.
As part of the agreement, Vanda will dismiss multiple lawsuits against the FDA, including challenges to the clinical hold on tradipitant and HETLIOZ® efficacy information sharing. The framework also includes temporary pauses in various administrative proceedings and legal actions to facilitate the resolution process.
Yahoo is in advanced talks to sell AOL to Italian technology company Bending Spoons for about $1.4 billion, four sources familiar with the matter said, as the Apollo Global Management-backed firm sheds one of the most recognizable names of the early internet era.
The Milan-based app developer is in advanced talks to purchase the legacy media brand, the sources said. But they cautioned that a final agreement has not been signed and talks could still fall apart.
The sources requested anonymity to discuss confidential negotiations. Yahoo is owned by private equity firm Apollo Global Management, which acquired a 90% stake in the company from Verizon in 2021 in a $5 billion deal.
Bending Spoons and Apollo declined to comment. Yahoo did not respond to Reuters' request for comment.
A deal would mark a fresh chapter for the one-time giant of the internet age, known for its email service and "You've Got Mail" notification. AOL was at the centre of the biggest merger in history at the time when it combined with Time Warner in 2000 but the mega-deal resulted in regulatory probes and writedowns.
Bending Spoons has emerged as one of Europe's most prominent technology firms, with a strategy of purchasing struggling tech companies and revamping them. In February 2024, the company completed a funding round that valued it at $2.55 billion, making it a rare "unicorn" in Italy's tech landscape. A unicorn is a private company with a valuation of $1 billion or more.
The deal would add AOL's vast user base to Bending Spoons' portfolio of mobile applications. AOL generates revenue from advertising and through its subscription services, including LifeLock identity theft protection, LastPass password management, and McAfee Multi Access malware protection.
More recently, AOL's website traffic has grown 20% year-over-year among the users aged 25 and 54, outpacing the growth in the category of users aged 55-plus, a source familiar with AOL's performance said.
The growth was driven by the introduction of multiple new content categories to AOL.com, including Health, Fitness, Animals, Science & Tech, Home & Garden, Lighter Side, True Crime, Local, amongst others, the source said.
Bending Spoons, whose products count 300 million monthly users, has done several acquisitions recently, including file-sharing service WeTransfer. Last month it agreed a deal to take private video platform company Vimeo for $1.38 billion, its largest acquisition to date.
Bankers see the firm as a candidate for an initial public offering (IPO) in the U.S. Chief Executive Officer Luca Ferrari, who co-founded Bending Spoons in 2013, told Reuters last year that there were no firm plans for an IPO but that the firm was working to be ready for it, and looking beyond Europe.
In the months and years ahead, school cafeteria trays could look much different as some state and federal lawmakers push to restrict ultra-processed foods in K–12 public schools, under the premise of assisting students to be happier, healthier, and higher-achieving.
Arizona, California, Louisiana, Utah, and Virginia passed laws removing unhealthy products, ingredients, or food dyes from school cafeterias, with healthier choices being phased in within the next two academic years. Similar legislation is pending in Hawaii, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, according to the websites of their respective state legislatures.
Foods that are considered “ultra-processed” have an abundance of additives and preservatives and are linked to chronic health issues such as obesity and diabetes, according to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Make Our Children Healthy Again guidance released on Sept. 9.
“The American diet has shifted dramatically toward highly processed foods, leading to nutrient depletion, increased caloric intake, and exposure to potentially harmful or unhealthy additives,” the guidance reads.
Ultra-Processed Foods and Scratch Kitchens
The Chef Ann Foundation defines ultra-processed foods as those that are chemically manipulated with ingredients such as corn, soy, and wheat extracts to extend shelf life, improve flavor, and enhance appearance. It also includes additives such as sugar, sodium, dyes, preservatives, and other chemicals to change the texture or increase the volume of feeds. Artificial ingredients are used to replace the vitamins and minerals lost as the result of processing and packaging.
Ultra-processed foods are less filling yet contain more calories than minimally processed foods, leading consumers to eat faster and consume more.
Chef Ann Foundation CEO Mara Fleishman said that, beyond cafeteria employee training and kitchen upgrades from heat-and-serve equipment to a scratch cooking setup, the other major necessary investment is increased funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which currently provides $4.50 per school lunch.
Fleishman told The Epoch Times via email that the bipartisan federal Scratch Cooked Meals for Students Act—a USDA pilot program that provides school cafeterias with refrigerators, convection ovens, steamers, and prep spaces—will be reintroduced in the next legislative session.
Most schools built around the middle of the 20th century were equipped with large kitchens designed for scratch cooking, but quality and nutrition took a back seat to efficiency and cost savings in the decades that followed.
By the 1980s, new schools were being built with smaller heat-and-serve operations, and older schools were shrinking their cafeterias to free up space for other functions. Districts that returned to scratch cooking are more likely to have a large central kitchen and transport the meals to their schools, according to Danielle Bock, director of nutritional services for the Greeley-Evans-Weld County School District in Colorado.
During a Sept. 9 House Health Care and Financial Services Subcommittee hearing on childhood nutrition and medication, legislators noted that about one-third of U.S. adolescent children are pre-diabetic and/or obese. Eve Stoody, director of the USDA’s Nutrition Guidance and Analysis Division, said about 61.9 percent of the calories consumed by U.S. youth are considered ultra-processed.
Stoody is working with Health and Human Services to develop a uniform definition of ultra-processed foods for future federal guidance on school menus. Although sodas, salty snacks, and candy are obvious examples, it’s still unclear whether yogurts, bagged salads, and canned vegetables are acceptable menu items.
“There have been discussions that some of these definitions are really broad,” she said.
Parents, Children Weigh In
The MAHA report provides several examples of other nations that serve whole foods for school lunches, including Brazil and countries across Northern Europe. Still, it doesn’t take into account that, for millions of students worldwide, having meals at school is a foreign concept.
Sarah Berner, an 11th-grade exchange student from Germany currently attending Cazenovia High School in upstate New York, said her schools back home always offered doughnuts in the morning and bread as a snack throughout the day. She and her classmates always went home for their afternoon meal before returning to class. Her first and only hot school lunch, eaten shortly after arriving in the United States, was a cheeseburger.
“It was good, I think. But I wouldn’t eat it again,” she told The Epoch Times.
Rowan Wallace, a sophomore in the district whose family is hosting Berner, said the school cafeteria has improved during her 11 years as a student. Hot dogs and pizza are no longer commonplace. The latest menu items—cheese-and-cracker bento boxes with yogurt parfaits—were very good, she said. Still, she said, she misses the deli sandwiches that are no longer offered and would like to see more whole-grain items and chia pudding.
Her mother, Julie Wallace, said the cafeteria does a good job with healthy grab-and-go items for busy high school students who don’t get a lunch period when they have band or chorus practice. She said she thinks that homemade granola bars would be the perfect afternoon energy-booster for teens who have sports practices or school club gatherings after school.
In Utah, state Rep. Kristen Chevrier said she based her bill calling for removal of additives and dyes from school foods on what she witnessed in her state’s Granite School District’s prep kitchen: large vats of homemade salsa, a conveyor belt of locally grown potatoes with minimal seasoning, and a panel of student taste-testers judging the flavor of new menu items—chicken sandwiches and burrito bowls.
“Moms approached me about getting rid of the toxins in school food,” Chevrier told The Epoch Times. “My own children have food sensitivities, so I understand what they mean.
“The closer we can get to natural and fewer ingredients, the better.”
Little Wiggle Room
School districts that receive USDA reimbursement funding for school lunches must follow guidelines that dictate serving sizes, types of food (fruits, vegetables, meats, and grains), calorie counts, and limits on saturated fat, sugar, and sodium. States can add restrictions. Current guidelines don’t address ultra-processed foods, according to the USDA website.
Schools purchase some foods directly from the USDA, and the federal agency regulates processed food manufacturers. For example, Post and General Mills make cereals with reduced sugar content specifically for schools. Districts are required to self-audit their food purchases and their meal preparation, and both functions are subject to state and federal level audits, according to Duncan Sproule, who worked as a school food services manager in urban and suburban districts in Syracuse, New York.
Sproule recalled an incident involving whole-grain pasta from the USDA. It didn’t hold its shape well, was difficult to serve, and was unpopular among the students. The remaining cases of the product were donated to local food pantries; the school spent local tax dollars to substitute regular pasta. Most districts rely on state and federal funding for meals and must carefully set aside money on a long-term basis to replace equipment.
“The margins are very tight,” Sproule told The Epoch Times.
Dave Bartholomew, who managed public school food service operations in the Central New York area for 35 years, said providing fresher foods in cold-weather states with short growing seasons is a tall task.
The USDA expects much from schools, he said, recalling the requirements to continue food service during the COVID-19 pandemic and getting meals to students in remote areas during winter storms.
“Improving the nutrition is a good thing, but it will need to be done very slowly and very meticulously,” Bartholomew told The Epoch Times.
“To understand the regulations we’re already dealing with, the politicians need to spend time in a cafeteria. Don’t just visit it. Go work in it for a day.”
School Food Service Already Changing
In upstate New York, school districts complied with stricter school lunch requirements set by President Barack Obama, Sproule recalled, noting that the chicken sandwich menu item decreased by less than 1 ounce and whole-grain rolls replaced white breads.
Dana Canino, child nutrition director at the Granite School District, said even the condiments in her central kitchen, which serves 80 schools, are homemade. She said she buys as much food as possible from local farmers, including fruits, whole wheat flour, and beef. Food prices have fluctuated since the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, so it’s too soon to gauge if whole food preparation is cheaper.
Bock said that in her Colorado district, school food service operations are still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted supply chains, decreased the labor force, and required the return of certain processed foods for sanitary reasons and heat-and-serve operations to accommodate children in their classrooms instead of cafeterias.
“We’re able to get back to scratch because we have culinary control over our ingredients,” she said.
Utah’s law takes effect for the next school year. State Sen. Heidi Balderree, who co-sponsored Chevrier’s bill, said many districts across her state won’t have to make drastic changes to comply with the new regulations beyond removing “chips and Jello.”
In addition to expected improvements in academic performance, Balderree said, Utah agriculture could enjoy growth if lawmakers undo regulations and smooth out supply chain issues to get farm-fresh products to school kitchens promptly.
“The more autonomous we can be, the better we'll be,” she told The Epoch Times. “In the long run, it’s a wise thing to do.”
