Following its move to secure ex-China rights to the CD38-directed antibody felzartamab, Biogen is doubling down and building on an existing partnership with local drugmaker TJ Biopharma.
The Massachusetts Big Biotech has signed an $850 million biobucks agreement with TJ Biopharma, securing exclusive China rights to the multi-indication candidate.
In an April 20 release, Cambridge-based Biogen said it will pay TJ $100 million upfront to expand its rights to felzartamab. The drug is currently being evaluated in global phase 3 studies across multiple immune-related conditions. The deal could generate up to $750 million in commercial and sales milestone payments, along with mid single-digit to low double-digit royalties in Greater China.
Felzartamab was originally developed by German biopharma MorphoSys. Its ex-China rights were acquired by Human Immunology Biosciences (HIBio) in 2022 in a deal valued at up to $1 billion.
In 2024, Biogen obtained those ex-China rights through its $1.15 billion acquisition of HIBio, announcing plans to advance the anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody into phase 3 trials across several rare immune-mediated indications.
Biogen’s intercontinental region president, Fraser Hall, said in a statement that felzartamab has the potential to evolve from a single product into a broader pipeline asset due to its applicability across multiple indications.
The latest deal expands the partnership between Biogen and China-based TJ Biopharma, which began in April 2025 when TJ joined two Biogen-sponsored phase 3 trials evaluating felzartamab in IgAN and PMN in China. Under that deal, TJ was tasked with leading regulatory interactions on the candidate in China.
With the new agreement, Biogen will continue to lead development in immunology indications and will assume responsibility for manufacturing and commercialization of felzartamab in Greater China. The drug is currently under review by China’s National Medical Products Administration after TJ submitted a Biologics License Application for multiple myeloma in 2024.
“This transaction sharpens our strategic focus and validates our ‘fast-to-market’ and ‘tiered value realization’ business models,” Dr. Lili Qian, general manager of TJ Biopharma, said in the release.
IgAN is a leading cause of end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) among young adults in China, which is believed to have one of the largest patient populations for both IgAN and PMN, according to the release.
It’s not just Apple Newsthat’s inundating users with left-wing bias — most of the other big online news aggregators are doing it, too.
Just 1% of Google News articles in non-customizable sections of Google News come from outlets that rank as right-leaning, according to a bombshell study by AllSides, a nonpartisan group that classifies news outlets according to their political leanings.
That’s compared to 73% from outlets deemed left leaning, according to the audit of major news aggregators that curate articles from around the internet.
Google News’ left-wing news bias is even worse than Apple News, whose in-house editorial team curated just 2% of its articles from right-leaning outlets, compared to 50% from the left, according to the study. AllSides focused on sections of the Apple News app that can’t be personalized by users.
Microsoft’s Bing News exhibited a similar editorial slant, drawing just 5% of its articles from conservative media outlets and 72% coming from left-leaning outlets. Yahoo News drew just 2% from the right and 53% from the left.
By failing to provide a balanced newsfeed to their users, the aggregators are effectively “prevent[ing] Americans from considering multiple views and thinking independently,” according to Julie Mastrine, the director of AllSides’ media bias rating system.
“The impact of one-sided media on our society is both sinister and immeasurable, as these aggregators enjoy massive reach, in the tens of millions of users,” Mastrine told The Post.
The AllSides report could place the Big Tech giants in the crosshairs of the White House and the Federal Trade Commission, which have vowed to crack down on anti-conservative bias in tech and media platforms.
The findings are “damning,” according to Mark Grabowski, a digital ethics expert who chairs the communications department at Adelphi University.
Apple CEO Tim Cook received a formal warning letter from the FTC.AP
“These companies have spent years insisting their platforms are neutral. This data makes that claim very hard to take seriously,” Grabowski said. “There’s no shortage of credible right-leaning journalism out there.”
AllSides’ “strong work should be a warning to all Americans — left, right and center — that our entire system of government is being threatened by the most powerful corporations the world has ever known,” said Dan Schneider of the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group.
“About half of Americans now get their news from these tech companies, but most don’t realize that the information they are getting is algorithmically skewed to push a liberal narrative,” added Schneider, who first raised alarms about Apple News’ alleged bias earlier this year.
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson has vowed to crack down on anti-conservative bias.AP
In February 2025, Ferguson launched an inquiry into tech censorship and said his agency wanted to “better understand how these firms may have violated the law by silencing and intimidating Americans for speaking their minds.”
AllSides conducted its audits between June and December 2025. The site’s team of reviewers focused on sections of each aggregator’s feeds that were curated by humans rather than algorithms. The audits took place over two-week periods.
To establish bias ratings for specific media outlets, AllSides uses a multi-partisan panel of experts — with two members from the left, two from the center and two from the right – that are trained to spot media bias, as well as blind surveys of regular Americans.
When reached for comment, a Google News spokesperson said AllSides’ study “gets the facts wrong.”
“It’s based on arbitrary ratings and a tiny two-week snapshot, and it ignores the fact that Google News is personalized to people’s interests and location,” the spokesperson said.
Apple said the trending news section of its app is populated automatically based on readership, not by its in-house editors. It declined further comment.
A Yahoo News spokesperson said the company works with hundreds of outlets from both sides of the political spectrum, including right-leaning outlets like Fox News and The Post.
In the study, each aggregator was given a bias ratio, with negative numbers denoting a leftward bias, positive numbers a rightward bias and 0.0 denoting perfect balance.
Google News ranked as the most biased aggregator with a bias ratio of -1.62. Apple News (-1.57), Bing News (-1.55) and Yahoo News (-1.55) all had ratios that placed them solidly in the “lean left” category.
Among the most popular news aggregators, SmartNews (-0.79), NewsBreak (-0.42), RealClearPolitics (0.17) and AllSides itself (0.09) all received “center” bias ratios, meaning they provide articles from a balanced range of sources.
The right-leaning Drudge Report was a special case. Because Drudge also rewrites headlines to suit its editorial vision rather than merely repost articles, AllSides conducted two separate audits – one focused on the political bent of the articles themselves, and one in which a panel of experts took Drudge’s revised headlines into account.
Based on content alone, Drudge received a -0.91 bias ratio – placing it within AllSides “center” designation. However, when combined with the audit of Drudge’s headlines, which are often sharply critical of Trump, the aggregator’s bias ratio swung to -1.74, which placed it to the left of Google News.
White House Wire, launched in 2025 by the Trump administration, was unsurprisingly ranked as “lean right” with a bias ratio of 2.50 – higher than any other aggregator tracked in AllSides’ analysis.
The number of articles reviewed for the analysis varied by aggregator, ranging from 140 (for Yahoo News) to 315 (for RealClearPolitics).
Representatives for Microsoft’s Bing News and Drudge Report did not return requests for comment.
Ashraf Al Safoo from Chicago has been sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for conspiring to provide material support to ISIS, which involved recruiting members into the terror group and encouraging attacks on its enemies.
Al Safoo, 41, was a leader of online organization Khattab Media Foundation, which pledged allegiance to ISIS, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in an April 17 press release. The foundation created and spread threats and ISIS propaganda online, with Al Safoo and other members posting pro-ISIS articles, videos, infographics, and essays in coordination with the terrorist outfit.
Most of the propaganda spread by Khattab promoted violent jihad on behalf of ISIS.
The organization’s posts celebrated mass shootings and terror attacks in the United States and encouraged people to engage in “lone wolf” attacks in Western nations.
In one post, Al Safoo asked Khattab members to “cause confusion and spread terror within the hearts of those who disbelieved,”according to the DOJ press release.
In another post, Al Safoo wrote, “Work hard, brothers, edit the issue into short clips, take the pictures out of it and publish the efforts of your brothers in the pages of the apostates. Participate in the war, and spread terror, the [Islamic] State does not want you to watch it only, rather, it incites you, and if you are unable to, use it to incite others.”
Al Safoo immigrated to the United States in 2008 and was naturalized in 2013. In 2018, he was arrested and has since been in federal custody.
A bench trial was conducted last year, after which U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey found Al Safoo guilty of various charges.
On April 16, Blakey imposed a 25-year prison term for Al Safoo, followed by 10 years of court-supervised release.
The State Department designated ISIS’s predecessor group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, as a foreign terrorist organization in December 2004 under the George W. Bush administration. When ISIS was formed in 2013, the designation carried over.
Over the past several months, multiple individuals have been detained for their support of ISIS.
In December 2025, a Texas man alleged to be an ISIS sympathizer was charged with an international terrorism offense. The man allegedly provided funding and bomb making equipment to people he believed were acting on behalf of ISIS.
Earlier in November, a dual American Albanian national was arrested and charged in New York for allegedly providing support to ISIS and distributing instructions for homemade bombs.
During a testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security on Dec. 11, Michael Glasheen, operations director at the FBI, highlighted how ISIS continues to pose a threat to American interests, both domestically and abroad.
The terror outfit is able to “direct, enable, and inspire attacks through their successful use of social media and messaging applications to attract individuals. ISIS seeks direct confrontation with the United States, and almost certainly would exploit any opportunity to attack the U.S. or Western interests,” Glasheen said.
Like other foreign terrorist organizations, he said, “ISIS advocates for lone-offender attacks in the U.S. and Western countries via videos and other English-language propaganda that have specifically advocated for attacks against civilians, the military, law enforcement, and intelligence community personnel.”
The 2025 Worldwide Threat Assessment report from the Defense Intelligence Agency said that ISIS and al-Qaeda have implemented a decentralized plotting approach toward Western nations.
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Both groups are referencing Israel’s operations in Gaza to generate revenue, hire new members, and inspire attacks against U.S., Jewish, Israeli, and European interests internationally.
“The groups are also seeking to improve their weapons capabilities, including with commercial technologies such as UAVs and artificial intelligence,” the report said, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles.
In December, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said it had initiated Operation Hawkeye Strike in Syria following an attack that killed two Army soldiers and a civilian interpreter.
CENTCOM said in a Feb. 14 update that since the launch of Operation Hawkeye Strike, “more than 50 ISIS terrorists have been killed or captured and over 100 ISIS infrastructure targets have been struck with hundreds of precision munitions during two months of targeted operations.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held a phone conversation with his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi (pictured left) on Monday, during which the two diplomats discussed the conflict in the Middle East and the ceasefire between the United States and Iran.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry's statement, Araghchi told his Russian counterpart about the "ceasefire violations" that Tehran claims the US committed, including the "illegal" naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and the seizure of an Iranian ship. He also confirmed Iran's willingness to do "everything in its power" to facilitate "unimpeded" passage of Russian ships through the critical Middle Eastern waterway.
On the other hand, the Russian foreign minister emphasized the need for the ceasefire to be maintaining and the importance of preventing "relapse into armed confrontation" by continuing diplomatic efforts.
Iran said on Monday it had not yet decided whether to join a second round of talks with the United States, even as Pakistan prepared to host a US delegation, with Tehran accusing Washington of violating the ceasefire and showing no real seriousness about diplomacy.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said Iran had no plan as of now for the next round of negotiations and said US actions had only deepened mistrust.
“As I am speaking to you now, we have no plan for the next round of negotiations,” he said.
Baghaei said Washington had undermined the process from the outset of the ceasefire.
He said the United States first tried to argue that Lebanon was not part of the truce, despite Pakistan’s mediator saying otherwise, and then continued what Iran describes as a naval blockade and other hostile actions in and around the Strait of Hormuz, including an attack on an Iranian commercial vessel.
He said such actions were clear ceasefire violations and that the blockade itself amounted to aggression under international law.
“Behavior and words are completely incompatible,” he said, adding that Iran would decide its next steps based only on national interests, not deadlines or ultimatums.
Baghaei said Iran had not started the war and had acted only in self-defense. He warned that if the United States or Israel launched any new attack, Iran’s armed forces would respond.
He also said Tehran could not forget what he called two US betrayals of diplomacy over the past year, saying Washington had twice attacked Iran during diplomatic processes.
“We cannot forget that twice America betrayed diplomacy,” he said.
Pakistan remains sole mediator
Baghaei said Pakistan remained Iran’s only formal mediator, though other countries were making efforts.
He said Iran was still reviewing the latest package conveyed through Pakistan after a US 15-point proposal, Iran’s 10-point response, discussions in Islamabad and further review during Pakistani army chief Asim Munir’s visit to Tehran.
He rejected suggestions that Iran had made a wholly new proposal, saying Tehran’s position had remained steady while the US side kept changing its demands.
“The American side keeps changing its demands, but we have remained steadfast,” he said.
He said some US demands were unacceptable and that repeated insistence on them would not change Iran’s position.
Baghaei also dismissed trust as a basis for negotiations with Washington.
“There is no trust,” he said.
Hormuz, Europe and red lines
Much of Baghaei’s remarks focused on the Strait of Hormuz. He said Iran’s actions there were lawful and defensive, arguing that before the US and Israeli attacks there had been no problem in the waterway.
“Before February 28, the Strait of Hormuz was safe and secure,” he said.
He said the international community should hold the United States and Israel responsible for the current insecurity, not Iran.
He added that Iranian authorities were still examining whether recent incidents involving Indian-linked ships had in fact been caused by Iranian forces.
Baghaei said as long as the current situation continued, it was unrealistic to speak of a full return to normal traffic through Hormuz. He said Iran had concluded that new rules or protocols would be needed to ensure safe passage in the future.
He also rejected European criticism, including comments from EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, saying Europe could not invoke international law selectively.
“You cannot use international law as a convenient tool,” he said.
Baghaei said Iran would not negotiate over its defense capabilities and said the transfer of enriched uranium had never been an Iranian option in the talks.
On oil, he said Iran was using all available means to keep its oil industry functioning and maintain exports despite the blockade and wartime pressure.
Central Command says since the commencement of the blockade against ships entering or exiting Iranian ports and coastal areas, US forces have directed 27 vessels to turn around or return to an Iranian port.
Since the commencement of the blockade against ships entering or exiting Iranian ports and coastal areas, U.S. forces have directed 27 vessels to turn around or return to an Iranian port. pic.twitter.com/G8dl96wN4H
