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Genmab Bets the House on an $8 Billion Cancer Antibody Deal
Danish antibody giant Genmab is paying $8 billion in cash to acquire Dutch biotech Merus NV, a 41% premium over its pre-deal share price. The prize: petosemtamab, a first-in-class bispecific antibody that hits both EGFR and cancer stem cell marker LGR5 simultaneously. Early data showed a 63% response rate when combined with Keytruda in PD-L1-positive head and neck cancer patients. But Genmab is taking on $5.5 billion in debt to close the deal, and petosemtamab's most impressive numbers are still phase 2. The real kicker may be Merus's Biclonics antibody engineering platform, which already has partnerships with Gilead, Eli Lilly, and Biohaven.
Why it matters: In a bispecific antibody landscape getting crowded with me-too molecules, Genmab just bought something genuinely differentiated. The deal reshapes the competitive map and signals that Big Biotech will pay enormous premiums to lock down first-in-class assets before someone else does.
Read more →Clinical and Regulatory
The Four-Year Huntington's Bet That Just Hit a Wall
At three years, uniQure's gene therapy AMT-130 showed a 75% slowing of Huntington's disease progression. At four years, that number dropped to 44% and lost statistical significance. The stock cratered nearly 40% in a single day. The FDA has also signaled that the Phase I/II data alone won't support a filing, leaving Huntington's patients (roughly 30,000 in the U.S.) still without a disease-modifying treatment.
Read more →Scholar Rock Breaks Biotech's Most Cursed Target With First Myostatin Approval
For 20 years, every myostatin inhibitor flopped in the clinic. Pfizer tried. Scholar Rock just ended the losing streak: the FDA approved ISEMBYLD (apitegromab) for spinal muscular atrophy, the first therapy to target muscle loss in SMA. The trick was hitting the protein upstream, before activation, and picking a patient population where motor function gains could actually be measured.
Read more →BridgeBio's Heart Drug Outperforms Pfizer's Entrenched Blockbuster in Real-World Data
A real-world study of 2,684 patients found BridgeBio's acoramidis was linked to an 18% lower risk of death, hospitalization, and other cardiac events versus Pfizer's tafamidis in ATTR cardiomyopathy. Cardiovascular hospitalizations dropped 27%. It's observational data (not a randomized trial), but in a market worth billions, this gives the newcomer its strongest argument yet for prescribing shifts.
Read more →Deals and Financings
Merck Pays $400M for a Cancer Drug That's Never Been Inside a Human
Merck dropped $400 million upfront (up to $2.13 billion total) on SciBrunch Therapeutics, a Shanghai biotech founded in late 2024, for a preclinical KRAS G12D inhibitor. The drug hasn't been tested in a single patient. With Keytruda facing core U.S. patent expirations starting in 2028, Merck is buying early and buying from China, where licensing deal values jumped tenfold from $5 billion to $50 billion between 2020 and 2024.
Read more →TRex Bio Raises $117M in IPO to Boost the Immune System's Peacekeepers
TRex Bio went public at $14 per share, raising $116.7 million for its regulatory T-cell (Treg) platform. Eli Lilly, the company's largest shareholder at roughly 24%, has backed TRex since its Series A and signed a $55 million collaboration. The bet: instead of suppressing the whole immune system to treat autoimmune disease, amplify the body's own inflammation police.
Read more →Pipeline and Policy
GSK's mRNA Flu Vaccine Beats Both Standard and High-Dose Shots, Heads to Phase 3
GSK's mRNA flu vaccine outperformed both standard and high-dose flu shots across all strains in a 971-patient Phase 2 trial. Phase 3 studies are registered to run through 2028. Moderna already has an approved mRNA flu shot; GSK is now the most credible late-stage challenger in a seasonal vaccine market worth roughly $10 billion globally.
Read more →Europe's Pharma R&D Share Drops to 31% as Nine Industry Chiefs Sound the Alarm
The chairs of AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, Roche, and six other European pharma giants co-signed an open letter calling the continent's decline a "slow agony." Europe's share of commercial clinical trials has been cut in half to just 9%, and about 40% of approved therapies never reach European patients. China, meanwhile, jumped from single digits to 30% of global trial starts.
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