Deals

In this episode of Denatured, Jennifer C. Smith-Parker speaks to Erik Digman Wiklund, CEO of Circio and Jacob Becraft, Co-founder and CEO of Strand Therapeutics. They discuss how post-COVID, emerging platforms like circular and logic circuit RNA are expanding the field’s therapeutic horizons.
FEATURED STORIES
Henry Gosebruch, who has $3.5 billion in capital to deploy, is thinking broad as he steers the decades-old biotech out of years of turmoil. 
Speaking on the sidelines of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, Novo business development executive Tamara Darsow said the company is gunning for obesity and diabetes assets.
Buying vaccine biotech Dynavax was an easy choice for Sanofi despite anti-vaccine moves by the Trump administration.
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GSK secures rights to Boston Pharmaceuticals’ efimosfermin alfa, which the pharma plans to develop for fatty liver diseases such as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis and alcohol-related liver disease.
It’s another wild twist in the story of Galapagos, a company that has been around for more than 25 years but has yet to get a therapy approved.
M&A and IPOs got off to a quick start in 2025 only to crash into a wall of policy challenges. Upfront payment for licensing transactions, however, grew as pharmas looked for less-risky deals.
ALS
The Alchemab deal will further strengthen Lilly’s early-stage pipeline for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, coming less than a year after the pharma licensed QurAlis’ antisense oligonucleotide to correct a specific protein alteration in ALS.
After multiple rounds of layoffs that cut Kronos down to just 10 people, the small molecule biotech has accepted a buyout offer from Kevin Tang’s Concentra Biosciences.
Announcing first-quarter results, Biogen CEO Chris Viehbacher admitted that tariffs are “a new topic for us,” but said he does not expect major impacts—at least for 2025.
Many companies have foreshadowed deals to come during earnings calls in recent days. The return of M&A would be a welcome sign for the biopharma ecosystem, which has been battered by macro headwinds such as tariffs and the possibility of new drug pricing pressures.
Policy uncertainties are impacting biopharma dealmaking from continent to continent, with companies being asked to walk a tightrope on their relations with China.
IPO
The deal is a blast from the not-too-distant past, when special purpose acquisition companies were an easy way for companies to list on the public market with a bundle of cash to operate on.
Roche’s Genentech is betting on the Flagship Pioneering–founded company’s discovery platform called DECODE to find new targets for an undisclosed autoimmune disorder.