Deals
Pfizer, Sanofi and others report Q3 beats; AbbVie, Roche and Novartis strike big deals; the 2024 presidential election looms; and BioSpace takes a look back at 10 years of NextGen, our annual pick of young biotechs to watch.
FEATURED STORIES
On the sidelines of BIO2025, Julie Gilmore, head of Lilly Gateway Labs, shares her thoughts on the $1.3 billion Verve Therapeutics buy, where Lilly’s therapeutic puck is potentially going and how the company is leveraging its unprecedented success in obesity to support young biotechs.
BioNTech said in 2022 that it faced “threats of a groundless patent infringement suit” from a company that was “unable to bring to market any product to help in the fight against COVID-19.” Now, the mRNA biotech is buying that very company.
Sanofi paid a more than 300% premium on its acquisition of Vigil Neuroscience, suggesting a fierce battle to seal the deal. Across biopharma, companies are sometimes willing to put it all on the line for the right buyout. Novartis’ recent acquisition of Regulus for $800 million upfront provides a case study.
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Telix abruptly pulled the plug on its initial public offering plans to begin trading Friday on the Nasdaq, saying the company “did not feel that the proposed discounts were aligned with its duty to its existing shareholders.”
Biogen recently bolstered its pipeline with a potential $1.8 billion acquisition of Human Immunology Biosciences, following other big players looking to cash in on a global immunology market estimated to grow to $257 billion by 2032.
In an SEC filing on Friday, Alumis said it aims to start late-stage trials of a TYK2 inhibitor in plaque psoriasis this year and is seeking public funding for the studies.
After rejecting a previous takeover offer from Future Pak, Vanda Pharmaceuticals is now fielding another acquisition proposal from Cycle Pharmaceuticals, which values the biotech at $8 per share.
Telix Pharmaceuticals is looking to cash in on radiopharmaceuticals, which have emerged as one of the hottest spaces in oncology, with an initial public offering to help support its pipeline of targeted radiation products.
Illumina on Monday announced that its board of directors is spinning off Grail and has applied to list the cancer diagnostics company on the Nasdaq.
Analysts predict a booming year for mergers and acquisitions, powered by obesity drug sales and pressure from upcoming patent expirations.
As evidenced by this week’s buyouts by J&J and Merck, Big Pharma appears to have found a sweet spot favoring smaller deals over megabillion-dollar acquisitions.
Merck on Wednesday announced a deal worth $3 billion to buy EyeBio and its first-in-class trispecific antibody Restoret, marking the pharma’s return to the ophthalmology space after nearly a decade.
Johnson & Johnson’s deal for Numab Therapeutics’ bispecific antibody NM26, slated to enter Phase II studies, comes on the heels of J&J’s $850 million Proteologix bispecific antibody acquisition.