Original reporting and analysis on the stories shaping biotech.
AstraZeneca just spent $30 million to secure an option on $1.77 billion worth of kidney disease drugs, partnering again with Chinese pharma giant CSPC on cutting-edge siRNA technology. The deal's clever structure tells us everything about how Big Pharma navigates Chinese innovation in a geopolitically charged world.
Novo Nordisk's anti-inflammatory heart drug crushed its target biomarker by 92% — then failed to prevent a single extra heart attack or stroke in a 6,300-patient trial. The stock dropped 9%, and the company's plan to build a life beyond Ozempic just got a lot harder.
Eli Lilly is spending up to $2.3 billion to acquire Ajax Therapeutics and its next-gen JAK2 inhibitor, despite the class's infamous FDA black box warning. Early clinical data showing 70% response rates in patients who'd failed existing treatments might explain why.
Legend Biotech's experimental in vivo CAR-T therapy hit a 100% response rate in six lymphoma patients, with no serious side effects and no factory required. Oppenheimer called it best-in-class and flagged Legend as a takeover target in biotech's hottest M&A space.
Bristol Myers Squibb just inked the second-largest China-to-global biopharma deal in history: a 13-program collaboration with Hengrui worth up to $15.2 billion. But most of that money only gets paid if the drugs actually work, and Washington is watching closely.
The FDA just picked seven companies for a brand-new program that lets them get regulatory feedback on drug factories *while they're still being built*. It could save up to 14 months on approvals, and the list of who got in tells you exactly where the industry is headed.
Pfizer's oral pill ritlecitinib just cleared both Phase 3 trials for vitiligo, a condition with almost no approved treatments. If regulators agree, it would be the first oral therapy ever approved to bring color back to depigmented skin.
The FDA just approved a CRISPR gene therapy for kids as young as two, making Casgevy the first gene-editing treatment cleared for toddlers with sickle cell disease or beta thalassemia. The approval took just 53 days, and the implications stretch far beyond the 5,500 newly eligible children.
Novartis dropped $1.1 billion in cash on a UK startup with zero clinical data and a completely novel ADC payload that's never been tested in humans. The deal structure, the science, and the strategic reversal all tell a fascinating story.
Eli Lilly slashed Zepbound's price to $449 per month for cash-pay patients, but only if you're willing to skip the fancy pen. Behind the move: a fierce price war with Novo Nordisk, mounting political pressure, and a strategy that could reshape how obesity drugs are sold in America.
Ipsen is spending up to $1.75 billion on a drug designed to reactivate the body's own tumor-killing machinery in myelofibrosis patients. The catch: the pivotal trial hasn't read out yet, and everything rides on what happens next.
The FDA just launched its first real-time clinical trial pilots with AstraZeneca and Amgen, streaming live safety and endpoint data to regulators as trials run. If this works, it could reshape how every drug gets developed.
Columbia University scientists pulled off the first-ever base edit of a human embryo, swapping single DNA letters without cutting the double helix. The precision is remarkable; the ethical firestorm is just getting started.
BioMarin's $270 million acquisition of Inozyme Pharma just hit a wall: the lead drug raised the right biomarker but couldn't heal children's bones in a Phase 3 trial. Now the deal's entire thesis is in question, and a write-down looks increasingly likely.
Evaluate's new forecast says global drug sales will double to $2 trillion by 2032, powered by GLP-1 obesity drugs and inflammation therapies. But Wall Street has already started cutting its estimates, and the pricing math might not add up.
The FDA just approved a $425,000-a-year kidney disease drug from a company that didn't even exist under its current name five years ago. TRUTAKNA's accelerated approval is only half the story; the data that could make or break it arrives in weeks.
AstraZeneca signed a $2.1 billion licensing deal with Sino Biopharmaceutical for a COPD drug designed to challenge Merck's blockbuster Ohtuvayre. With stronger early lung function data and AstraZeneca's massive respiratory salesforce behind it, the PDE3/PDE4 market just became a two-horse race.
Bristol Myers Squibb just crushed Q2 estimates and hiked its 2026 forecast by billions, thanks to a blood thinner that won't quit and a new drug lineup firing on all cylinders. There's just one problem: the biggest patent cliff in pharma history is about 18 months away.
A tiny German biotech just got approval to test the first non-viral CAR-T therapy in humans, targeting leukemia with a manufacturing approach that costs a fraction of the industry standard. If it works, it could blow open who gets access to cell therapy.
Scientists at the University of Minnesota assembled a cell entirely from non-living parts that can eat, grow, copy its DNA, and divide. It runs for about five to ten generations before breaking down, and its creators are clear: they haven't created life. But they may have built the most important chemistry set in history.
RFK Jr. wants to create a federal catalog of presumed Covid-19 vaccine injuries, a move that could help legitimately harmed patients or validate scientifically unsupported claims. The proposed rule drops in November, and everyone from Wall Street to the CDC is bracing for the fallout.
Fate Therapeutics' off-the-shelf CAR-T therapy just showed early promise in systemic sclerosis, a brutal autoimmune disease with no real cure. Only four patients so far, but every one improved — with zero serious side effects.
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