Deals
Biopharma executives shared their thoughts on the potential impacts of the new administration; Annalee Armstrong recaps JPM and her talks with Biogen, Gilead, Novavax and more; Wegovy’s higher dose induces more weight loss; AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo’s Dato-DXd scores its first FDA approval.
FEATURED STORIES
In 2023, the ADC market exceeded $10 billion, and this momentum is persisting into 2024, as evidenced by several strategic deals and a robust pipeline of candidate drugs.
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.
Recent M&A activity indicates a potential resurgence in the appetites of larger companies for psychiatric drug development, but experts say the space may not offer a sufficient risk-reward proposition for R&D.
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The Muna partnership will give GSK access to Muna’s MiND-MAP platform, which it will apply to postmortem brain samples to identify potential therapeutic targets for Alzheimer’s disease.
One year after a potential $1.7 billion deal with Hansoh Pharma, GSK goes back to China to forge another alliance with DualityBio for another deal that could be worth up to $1 billion as it continues to build up its ADC portfolio.
The Danish startup, whose lead candidate has parallels to Amgen’s MariTide, launches on the heels of Amgen’s Phase II data release for the drug last week.
Novartis, Gilead, Roche and Takeda commit to new partners in a spate of mid-sized collaborations this week. Meanwhile, Applied Therapeutics’ stock tanks 80% after govorestat is denied approval, Intra-Cellular Therapies seeks to expand Caplyta into major depressive disorder and the FDA investigates the safety of bluebird bio’s Skysona.
The collaboration will see COUR and Roche’s Genentech leverage the biotech’s antigen-specific immune tolerance platform to develop and commercialize therapies for an undisclosed autoimmune disease.
BridgeBio’s Attruby wins approval for transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy while the FDA accepts Alnylam’s application for Amvuttra in the indication; Cassava’s controversial Alzheimer’s drug flunks Phase III; Amgen’s MariTide fails to impress investors, Donald Trump’s controversial nominations continue.
With Elevidys expansion in hand, Sarepta commits up to $10 billion to develop short interfering RNA–based drugs to build out its pipeline.
Novartis has disclosed roughly $19.4 billion in deals in the past five years. CEO Vas Narasimhan says there’s more to come.
The deal has secured Novartis the chance to work with Ratio Therapeutics on a novel drug candidate that could fortify the Big Pharma against competition from would-be radiopharmaceutical rivals such as BMS and Lilly.
The acquisition will give BioNTech full ownership of an investigational bispecific antibody targeting the PD-L1/VEGF-A pathways, a hot area in oncology that could potentially replace standard checkpoint inhibitors for cancer treatment.