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Merck Is Spending $10 Billion on a Lung Drug Because Its Biggest Cash Cow Is Dying
Keytruda, the best-selling cancer drug on Earth, generates roughly $31.7 billion a year for Merck. Its core patents expire in 2028, and biosimilars will flood in like discount furniture after a brand-name store closes. Merck's answer: a $10 billion all-cash deal for Verona Pharma and its COPD drug ensifentrine (brand name Ohtuvayre), the first inhaled therapy with a genuinely new mechanism in over 20 years. The drug works two jobs at once, opening airways and reducing inflammation, and showed a 40% reduction in COPD flare-ups in clinical trials. Merck paid a 23% premium, and the deal signals a strategic pivot from cancer-drug dependence into respiratory medicine.
Why it matters: With Keytruda's patent cliff looming, this deal is less about lungs and more about corporate survival. Merck is essentially buying an insurance policy in the form of an entire therapeutic area, one that's been underinnovated for two decades.
Read more →Deals and M&A
The Other Merck Just Bought the Lab Supply Store for $11.3 Billion
Merck KGaA (the German one) is paying $11.3 billion in cash for Bio-Techne, a company that sells over 425,000 antibody types and over 5,000 proteins to labs worldwide. The 36% premium raised eyebrows, but the logic is clear: when everyone's building drugs, the company selling the ingredients wins regardless of whose drug works. Analysts are cautiously impressed; the deal is expected to close by early 2027.
Read more →Bayer Drops $2.2 Billion on Its First-Ever U.S. Pharma Factory
After a century of selling pills in America without building a major plant here, Bayer is spending $2.2 billion on a manufacturing campus in New Albany, Ohio. The first module goes live in 2031. It's part of a broader reshoring wave driven by tariff pressure and supply chain anxiety.
Read more →Clinical and Regulatory
The First New Way to Fight Herpes in 30 Years Just Got Approved
The FDA approved pritelivir (brand name Hovilpri), the first herpes antiviral with a new mechanism of action since the 1990s. It targets a completely different part of the virus than acyclovir, meaning it works even when the old drugs don't. In trials, 62.7% of patients on pritelivir fully healed by Day 28 versus 34% on alternatives, and only 2% discontinued due to side effects compared to 20% in the control group.
Read more →Lilly's Psoriasis-Plus-Weight-Loss Combo Is Rewriting the Playbook
Lilly showed that pairing psoriasis drug Taltz with weight-loss blockbuster Zepbound doesn't just treat two diseases; it may unlock a broader biological response. The combo changed 482 proteins versus 140 for Taltz alone, suggesting genuine immunometabolic synergy. About 35% of psoriasis patients are also obese, and Lilly owns both drugs, giving it a strategic advantage no competitor can easily match.
Read more →Winners and Losers
The Cancer Therapy Nobody Thought Could Scale Just Raised Guidance by $55 Million
Iovance bumped its 2026 revenue guidance to $410-420 million for Amtagvi, a therapy that requires surgically removing tumor tissue, growing the patient's own immune cells, and shipping them back on a precise schedule. Q2 total revenue hit $99.3 million. For a treatment that skeptics said couldn't scale commercially, the revenue curve is a compelling rebuttal.
Read more →Foghorn's Lilly-Partnered Cancer Drug Flopped, Then It Cut 40% of Its Staff
Foghorn Therapeutics axed 40% of its workforce after its Lilly-partnered cancer drug FHD-909 flopped in Phase 1. The $1.6 billion collaboration is dead, the stock sits at around $2, and the company now pins its hopes on earlier-stage programs in one of oncology's hardest fields.
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