Deals
AstraZeneca and CSPC Pharmaceutical Group have already inked two other agreements this year, including an obesity-focused deal in January and one focused on chronic diseases in June.
FEATURED STORIES
Dealmaking across biopharma is shifting dramatically as the SEC rolls out new regulations to ease burdens on newly public companies and antitrust review is replaced by drug pricing as the policy concern du jour.
Dual and even triple or quadruple track processes have come roaring back in 2026 thanks to a glut of M&A that has refilled investors’ wallets. Big Pharma is being put on notice that time is critical if they want to acquire.
While merger and acquisition activity has been robust of late, frequent changes in guidance and leadership at the regulator add risk to any transaction.
Subscribe to BioPharm Executive
Market insights and trending stories for biopharma leaders, in your inbox every Wednesday
THE LATEST
The star of the agreement targets a specific type of tau protein, helping to prevent toxic accumulation in the brain while also preserving the function of healthy tau.
Sanofi bought Dren’s DR-0201 program earlier this year for $600 million upfront and is running two Phase I trials in undisclosed inflammatory indications.
With $6 billion left in firepower, Pfizer is planning transactions in the hundreds of millions to the low-billions range, particularly in internal medicine and immunology and inflammation, Guggenheim reported.
Pfizer apparently had more in the tank after the high-profile battle to acquire Metsera earlier this fall. The company has licensed a new GLP-1 from YaoPharma.
What China is accomplishing in R&D “has implications for everyone playing in the R&D or innovation world,” McKinsey’s Fangning Zhang says.
The centerpiece of the deal is the in vivo editor TSRA-196, which in preclinical studies has shown robust editing at SERPINA1, the locus linked to alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency.
At one point in merger negotiations with Novartis, Avidity CEO Sarah Boyce and her team walked, cutting off access to a data room and moving on to a capital raise.
The CRO market in the APAC region is thriving, particularly in China, due to intense clinical trial and innovation development, with Western investors and pharma leaning in.
Drug candidates don’t usually move among Big Pharma, but these five biotechs helped facilitate such hand-offs, scooping up assets from one pharma on the cheap before being bought out for billions by another.
Halda Therapeutics is developing oral assets for prostate and lung cancer. The deal comes after Johnson & Johnson set an ambitious goal for its oncology sales by 2030.