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While Novartis secured the biggest deal of the fourth quarter, a handful of riveting tales emerged from the bottom of the M&A list, including a zombie buyout and a bidding war. And no, we’re not talking about Metsera.
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Four of this year’s biggest acquisitions topped 11-figure figures. One was 2025’s messiest bidding war.
Despite the definitive failure of Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide in Alzheimer’s, biotech executives, analysts and other industry experts see potential in more testing of GLP-1s for the neurodegenerative disease, particularly in a combination approach.
A push to reshore some drug production and progress in advanced manufacturing technologies have been prominent trends this year, industry leaders say.
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With five CDER leaders in one year and regulatory proposals coming “by fiat,” the FDA is only making it more difficult to bring therapies to patients.
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Nuclidium’s radiopharmaceutical platform is unique in its use of copper-based payloads, which the biotech claims can deliver higher doses while also being safer.
The deal gives AstraZeneca’s rare disease unit Alexion access to specialized capsids developed by the Japanese biotech JCR Pharmaceuticals for use in up to five of Alexion’s gene therapies.
In the second biggest acquisition of the year, Merck gains the commercial COPD drug Ohtuvayre, which could help offset the loss of revenue when Keytruda’s patent expires later this decade.
The high court’s order blocks a May decision by a California court that temporarily blocked the efforts of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to drastically reduce the size of his agency’s workforce.
Leerink Partners called the announcement a ‘positive’ given the delayed timeframe and the uncertainty that the administration will implement tariffs at all.
The FDA will allow a new dosing schedule for Eli Lilly’s Alzheimer’s drug Kisunla that could lessen a known side effect of the monoclonal antibody drug class that has led to several deaths.
H2 2025 catalysts to watch, biopharma implications of President Trump’s tax law, KalVista’s new hereditary angioedema drug that Marty Makary reportedly tried to reject, another lawsuit aimed at Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a plea from patients with ALS for access to BrainStorm’s NurOwn.
Actithera’s radiopharma assets irreversibly bind to their targets, allowing for longer retention of the drug inside tumors.
Armed with the latest biological knowledge and cutting-edge computational techniques—and, of course, investor dollars—these six biotechs are playing in the largely underappreciated longevity space, developing therapies that may improve the quality of aging.
The industry sector focused on aging is only about 10 years old, but acting on what scientists already know, a new crop of biotechs, backed by investors, are taking a disease-centric approach to extending the human lifespan.