Past Issues
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Gilead pays $1.9B for cancer drugs that wear molecular disguises
Big pharma went on a shopping spree this week, and the receipts are wild. Gilead dropped $1.9 billion on cancer drugs designed to sneak past healthy tissue, Novartis wrote a $575 million check for RNA tech from a Chinese biotech most people have never heard of, and the first biosimilar challenger to the world's best-selling drug just landed on the FDA's desk.
Pharma's longest-running power couple just bet $8 billion on a sequel
Sanofi and Regeneron have been together longer than the iPhone has existed. Now they're expanding their partnership with a deal worth up to $8 billion, betting they can build a Dupixent sequel before the blockbuster's patents expire. Meanwhile, BioNTech's mRNA cancer vaccine hit a wall, BMS had a very busy week, and the obesity arms race went shopping in China.
Genmab just dropped $8B on a cancer drug most people have never heard of
An $8 billion antibody deal, a 20-year curse finally broken, and a four-year gene therapy bet that just hit a wall. Today's issue covers the biggest biotech acquisition of the year, a landmark FDA approval nobody saw coming, and the data readout that sent a stock down nearly 40% in a single session.
Merck just wrote a $10B check for a lung drug. The reason is existential.
Two different Mercks made two massive deals on the same day, one of them is racing a patent cliff, and the other just bought the biotech equivalent of Home Depot. Plus: the first new way to fight herpes in 30 years, a cancer therapy that wasn't supposed to scale proving everyone wrong, and Lilly's psoriasis-obesity cocktail rewriting the treatment playbook.
The U.S. just launched a cancer vaccine moonshot. Moderna popped 14%.
The federal government is borrowing the Operation Warp Speed playbook for cancer vaccines, and Wall Street is already placing bets. Meanwhile, a company trying to reverse aging just shared the first human data, and the FDA opened a door that's never been opened for RNA editing.
Argenx got a promotion and a breakup text in the same hour
One of biotech's most closely watched companies had its best and worst clinical readout on the same day, and the stock market only cared about the bad one. Meanwhile, a tiny lung drug company just said the word nobody dares say in IPF: reversal.
A Nobel laureate's CRISPR company just shut down. The reason is chilling.
Caribou Biosciences had a Nobel co-founder, solid clinical data, and $300 million from its IPO. None of it was enough. Its closure is the latest signal that great gene-editing science and viable gene-editing businesses are two very different things. Plus: a Parkinson's drug gives patients 37 more minutes of normalcy, and a small San Diego company just blocked the world's best-selling drug in eight countries.
A Nobel laureate's CRISPR company just shut down. The reason is bigger than one startup.
Caribou Biosciences, the CRISPR darling co-founded by Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna, is pulling the plug on all clinical programs and exploring a fire sale. Meanwhile, Eli Lilly is doing something you almost never see in pharma: intentionally making its own blockbuster look obsolete.
Pond scum just won the Nobel Prize (and it might cure blindness)
Three scientists turned a protein from green algae into a tool that controls brain cells with light, and Stockholm just gave them the Nobel for it. Meanwhile, Novartis bet $7.8 billion on a Chinese mRNA company most people have never heard of, AstraZeneca parked $2 billion in a drug it doesn't even own, and the FDA cleared a phone app to treat schizophrenia. Buckle up.
A zero-revenue biotech just matched Pfizer's best vaccine and raised it by 11
A company with no approved products, no revenue, and nothing but audacity just dropped Phase 3 data that should make Pfizer and Merck very uncomfortable. Meanwhile, pharma's most contentious couple kissed and made up to the tune of $8 billion, and the FDA sent a warning shot that could reshape how dozens of cancer drugs reach the market.
Genmab just wrote an $8B check for a cancer drug with no Phase 3 data
Genmab is betting $8 billion on a cancer drug before the final exam results are in, Lilly is resurrecting a drug class the FDA once slapped with boxed warnings, and China's biotech corridor is pulling billions from Western pharma. Buckle up.
Merck KGaA just spent $11.3B on a company you've never heard of
The biggest biotech acquisition in over a decade isn't a flashy gene therapy or a cancer blockbuster. It's a company that sells proteins and antibodies to lab scientists in Minneapolis. Meanwhile, Regeneron may have just cracked the biggest flaw in Ozempic, and a tiny Chinese biotech proved an entirely new way of talking to human genes.
Novartis just paid $575M for your cells to manufacture their own drugs
Novartis dropped nearly $11 billion across two deals in a matter of days, betting that the future of medicine isn't about making better drugs but about rethinking how they're built and delivered. Meanwhile, the funding gap between biotech's haves and have-nots has never looked wider.
54 pounds in 48 weeks: Lilly's new obesity combo just broke every record
Eli Lilly posted the most jaw-dropping weight loss numbers the obesity field has ever seen, but a brutal dropout rate threatens to steal the headline. Meanwhile, a cancer drug just made immunotherapy history, HHS wants to blow up clinical trials as we know them, and someone raised $251 million to make drugs in outer space.
A gene therapy worked for 3 years, then stopped. Now the FDA has to decide.
uniQure's Huntington's gene therapy looked like a breakthrough at three years. Then the four-year data arrived, $1 billion in market value evaporated, and the FDA was left holding an approval application built on the older, prettier numbers. Meanwhile, the obesity drug arms race escalated on three fronts, and Beam Therapeutics accused a former scientist of walking out with its secret recipe.
Novartis bought a $12B platform. Then the data came in.
Novartis closed the biggest biotech acquisition in months, then watched a key Phase 3 trial fail before the ink was dry. Meanwhile, Big Pharma wrote billions in checks to Chinese biotechs in a flurry of deals, and a company left for dead just tripled its stock overnight. Buckle up.
AstraZeneca's heart drug worked at the molecular level. It still failed.
A gene-silencing drug that crushed it in nerve disease just flopped in the heart, and the reason why has cardiologists rethinking everything they assumed about ATTR treatment. Meanwhile, a cancer therapy is making lupus disappear, weekly insulin is officially here, and two children's deaths in gene-editing trials are forcing an uncomfortable global reckoning.
Kids died. Sarepta's gene therapy just got the FDA's scariest warning label.
Sarepta's Duchenne gene therapy was supposed to rewrite the future for boys losing their muscles to a fatal disease. Instead, it's now carrying a black box warning after pediatric deaths, and the company just cut a third of its workforce. Meanwhile, Lilly went on a $6 billion shopping spree across two continents, and a Chinese biotech showed that your body might be able to build its own cancer therapy.
A disease that builds a second skeleton just met a pill that stops it cold
The FDA handed out approvals like candy this week, including one for a disease so rare it affects one in a million people, and another for a $3.95 million gene therapy that rewrites the playbook for fatal childhood illness. Meanwhile, a child's death in a Chinese gene-editing trial stayed hidden for a year, and Novo Nordisk paid over a billion dollars for a coating thinner than a soap bubble.
365 shots down to 52: the daily insulin era is officially over
Eli Lilly just got the green light to replace your daily insulin ritual with a once-a-week shot, and the pricing battle with Novo Nordisk is about to get spicy. Meanwhile, half of cancer patients stayed in remission five years after a single infusion, a monkey study hints at one-shot cholesterol cures, and a Spanish biotech delivered the first-ever drug for a disease that had zero options.
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