Original reporting and analysis on the stories shaping biotech.
Kailera Therapeutics' oral obesity pill just hit its goals in two late-stage China trials, delivering 11% weight loss and strong diabetes results. But the GI side effects are intense, and the real battle for the $22 billion oral obesity market is just getting started.
Eli Lilly is paying up to $2.3 billion for Ajax Therapeutics, a startup with a single Phase 1 drug and $143 million in total funding. The bet: a first-in-class JAK2 inhibitor that attacks blood cancer in a way no approved drug can.
The FDA just approved Vera Therapeutics' Trutakna for IgA nephropathy, a kidney disease that barely had any treatments three years ago. Now it has six approved drugs, Wall Street is projecting blockbuster sales, and the real competition is just getting started.
A rare childhood disease that robs kids of their ability to walk has never had an approved treatment. IntraBio's pivotal trial results and an FDA decision date in September could change that for the first time ever.
Seven major medical groups are suing to overturn the CDC's dramatic childhood vaccine overhaul, which cut universal recommendations from 17 diseases to 11. A federal judge has already blocked the changes, but the fight is heading to appeals court with enormous stakes for every family in America.
Sarepta added the FDA's most severe safety warning to its Duchenne gene therapy Elevidys after fatal liver failures in pediatric patients, then announced it's cutting 500 workers. The company's flagship drug went from $900M launch year to an uncertain future in record time.
Gilead Sciences is paying up to $5 billion for Tubulis, a German ADC startup that raised just $12 million in its first funding round six years ago. The deal says as much about Big Pharma's desperation for next-gen cancer platforms as it does about one company's wild ride from university spin-out to mega-acquisition.
Vertex Pharmaceuticals is dropping $10 billion (its largest deal ever) to acquire Crinetics Pharmaceuticals and storm into the world of rare hormone disorders. It's a 102% premium, an all-cash deal, and a massive bet that endocrinology is biotech's next big frontier.
The Trump administration's Most Favored Nation drug pricing policy was supposed to squeeze Big Pharma's margins. J&J just raised its 2026 forecast anyway, and Wall Street isn't worried. Here's why the pricing hammer may have actually helped the giants.
Genentech axed 103 scientists from its storied research unit and signed a $490 million breast cancer deal with Astex on virtually the same timeline. It's the clearest signal yet of how big pharma is reshuffling the R&D deck in 2026.
A gene editing startup co-founded by a Nobel laureate just filed to go public, and it's not chasing rare diseases. Scribe Therapeutics wants to use CRISPR to replace your daily cholesterol pills with a single dose that silences the genes behind heart disease.
Novartis dropped $1.1 billion upfront on a UK biotech with zero human data, marking its boldest entry into the red-hot ADC space. The bet: a completely novel payload class that could leapfrog every antibody-drug conjugate on the market today.
For 40 years, the only treatment for alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency has been weekly IV infusions of the same protein. Now Sanofi and Wave Life Sciences are racing toward fundamentally different solutions, and both just dropped data that suggest the drought is finally ending.
Nine pharma giants just signed pricing deals with the Trump administration, trading deep drug discounts for three-year tariff protection. Wall Street loved it. But the real story isn't about today's prices; it's about the negotiating framework being built for tomorrow.
Regeneron just dropped $2.3 billion on a company that started in a rented lab corner with an $8 curtain protecting its equipment. Parabilis Medicines isn't building traditional ADCs; it's engineering spy-like peptides that slip inside cells and neutralize "undruggable" cancer targets from within.
Roche's experimental KRAS inhibitor divarasib just beat both Amgen's and BMS's approved drugs in a direct phase 3 showdown, hitting survival endpoints that could reshape the entire KRAS lung cancer market. It's the biotech equivalent of challenging two champions to a fight at the same time and walking away with both belts.
Immunovant's FcRn inhibitor failed two Phase 3 trials in thyroid eye disease, costing $39 million to shut down. The failure isn't just one company's problem; it's exposing the limits of an entire drug class that Wall Street thought could conquer all of autoimmunity.
Eli Lilly dropped $202 million on a preclinical startup with zero drugs in trials. The reason? A protein that smuggles DNA past your immune system and could make gene therapy repeatable for the first time.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation just made its largest donation ever: $861 million over a decade to turn Denmark's BioInnovation Institute into a European biotech powerhouse. The catch? It's not just about drugs anymore.
BioMarin closed its $270 million Inozyme acquisition on July 1st. Five days later, the drug failed its key Phase 3 bone-healing endpoint despite hitting its biochemical target. The ultra-rare disease bet just got a lot riskier.
Regeneron's fianlimab combo showed five extra months of progression-free survival versus Keytruda in melanoma, but missed statistical significance by a hair. Wall Street wiped 11% off the stock and analysts are calling it a worst-case scenario for the company's oncology ambitions.
BioNTech is quietly shopping three German manufacturing sites built during the pandemic's peak, cutting 1,860 jobs in its biggest restructuring ever. The mRNA giant is betting its future on cancer, not COVID, but the pivot comes with serious risks.
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