Original reporting and analysis on the stories shaping biotech.
Otsuka Pharmaceutical just dropped $1.225 billion on a company built around an MDMA analog for PTSD, the biggest pharma deal the psychedelics space has ever seen. Two years after the FDA rejected Lykos' MDMA therapy, Big Pharma is betting the comeback will look very different.
AstraZeneca's tozorakimab just nailed two Phase 3 trials in COPD, a disease that has been a graveyard for biologic drugs. The kicker? It worked across the board, not just in narrow patient subsets, potentially unlocking a $5 billion opportunity in a market everyone left for dead.
Vertex spent $4.9 billion on a kidney drug nobody was sure about. The Phase 3 results just came in, and they might justify every penny, with analysts projecting peak sales that could dwarf the acquisition price.
A masked antibody-drug conjugate from tiny CytomX Therapeutics just posted a 32% response rate in late-line colorectal cancer, a disease where low-single-digit responses are the norm. The stock went haywire, but the science behind it might be even more interesting.
A startup just raised $89 million to turn injectable peptide drugs into pills you can swallow. In a market where oral GLP-1s could be worth nearly $68 billion by 2034, the race to crack oral peptide delivery is biotech's hottest arms race.
Pfizer's Lyme disease vaccine cut infections by 73% in a massive trial, but a statistical technicality means it technically failed. With no Lyme vaccine on the market since 2002, the regulatory stakes couldn't be higher.
A bipartisan group of senators wants to cap insulin at $35 per month for privately insured and uninsured Americans, finishing what the Inflation Reduction Act started. The bill could reshape drug pricing far beyond insulin.
Novartis is dropping up to $2 billion on a Phase 1 startup called Excellergy to build a successor to Xolair, its $4.4 billion allergy juggernaut. With biosimilars closing in, it's the most expensive insurance policy in pharma.
The FDA approved Rocket Pharma's gene therapy Kresladi for a rare immune disorder that kills 75% of untreated kids before age two. The twist: the agency had already rejected it twice, and the drug's clinical results were never the problem.
CMR Surgical just launched its Versius Plus robotic system in the U.S., taking direct aim at Intuitive Surgical's $10 billion empire. With modular arms that roll between operating rooms and $1.4 billion in funding, this UK challenger is betting that hospitals are ready for a more flexible (and potentially cheaper) alternative.
The FDA just approved a drug that fights cancer by blocking your own stress hormone. Lifyorli targets cortisol-driven chemo resistance in platinum-resistant ovarian cancer, and the survival data from the ROSELLA trial is turning heads.
Sarepta's $3 million gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy has killed children from liver failure. Now the company is betting on an enhanced immunosuppression regimen to fix its flagship product, with implications for the entire gene therapy field.
AbbVie paid up to $1.2 billion for Gilgamesh's lead psychedelic depression drug. The team kept everything else, spun out a new company, and just raised $60 million to build what could be an oral alternative to ketamine.
A Minneapolis startup just raised $50 million to test whether zapping your gut lining with electricity can treat type 2 diabetes. It sounds wild, but Mayo Clinic helped build it, Intuitive Ventures is backing it, and the FDA gave it a fast track.
Innate Pharma just walked away from the NK cell engager technology it spent two decades building. With cash running out by Q3 2026 and its ANKET platform reduced to a single preclinical asset, the Marseille biotech is betting everything on three surviving programs.
Insmed's inhaled antibiotic ARIKAYCE just cleared a major hurdle that could transform it from a last-resort drug into a first-line treatment for a rare lung infection most people have never heard of. The commercial and clinical stakes are bigger than you'd think.
Maze Therapeutics dropped Phase 2 kidney disease data and called it potentially best-in-class. The stock promptly cratered. A look at what the numbers actually showed, and why the market wasn't buying what Maze was selling.
Merck is paying $6.7 billion for Terns Pharmaceuticals and its early-stage leukemia drug. With Keytruda's $29.5 billion in annual sales about to face patent expiration, this is what urgency looks like in pharma.
For nearly 20 years, kids with Hunter syndrome had a treatment that couldn't reach their brains. Denali Therapeutics just got FDA approval for Avlayah, the first enzyme therapy that crosses the blood-brain barrier, and it could change the game for rare neurological diseases.
A UK biotech with a Nobel laureate co-founder just emerged from seven years of stealth mode with $87 million and a plan to do what no approved drug can: remove the protein clumps already destroying patients' hearts. The investor syndicate behind the bet is stacked.
The FDA just flagged a seizure risk hiding inside the most common Parkinson's drug in America. The culprit? A slow vitamin drain that nobody was checking for. Two patients have already died, but the fix might cost less than your morning coffee.
Sarepta just dropped the first human data from its blockbuster $11 billion siRNA partnership with Arrowhead, and the results suggest their gene-silencing drugs can actually reach muscle tissue safely. For two rare diseases with zero approved treatments, that's a very big deal.
Join thousands of biotech professionals who start their day with our free, daily briefing.