M & A

More than 30 biopharma executives, investors and industry experts shared their views on the environment for funding and deal-making in the year to come. With a patent cliff looming over big pharma at the same time as technology opens manifold possibilities for new approaches to drug discovery and development, the general view is that 2025 will be a busy year for partnering, with a trend towards earlier-stage deals and milestone-dependent payments.

Now that one of the most controversial pharma M&As of 2024 has closed, the Pink Sheet looks at whether overtures to concerned customers and extended prenotification discussions helped Novo and Catalent seal the deal.

A decade after Teva was slapped with a ten-figure fine for its alleged illegal activities blocking US generic competition to its Provigil brand, the Israeli firm has offloaded the narcolepsy drug and follow-up brand Nuvigil in the US to Apotex.

Scrip spoke with Lilly chief medical officer David Hyman at J.P. Morgan about the company’s oncology dealmaking strategy and plans for Scorpion’s selective PI3Kα-targeting asset.

PE firms Advent and Carlyle drove the biggest M&A deals in human and animal pharmaceuticals in India during 2024, a year that also saw Lupin strike deals with Eli Lilly and Boehringer Ingelheim to further its ambitions in the fast-growing diabetes space. Which segments look hot and what are the expected trends for deal making in 2025?

GSK will pay up to $1.15bn for IDRx, Lilly is said to be making a play for Scorpion, Biogen offered to buy Sage and Gilead announced a partnership with Leo Pharma ahead of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.

Acquired in August 2021 by Bayer, the San Diego-based biotech has used its autonomous operating model to make a purchase of its own, taking control of its functional genomics partner Tavros.

The new year is only a couple of days old but the Anglo-Irish biotech has agreed a sale to Hookipa that will create a US-listed entity around HB-700, which targets multiple KRAS mutations in lung, colorectal and pancreatic cancers, and Poolbeg's Phase II-ready drug which is designed to prevent cancer immunotherapy-induced cytokine release syndrome.

In 2023, China emerged as the second largest exporter in the global biopharmaceutical pipeline. While innovation, international expansion, and commercialization remain pivotal, the industry's growth has increasingly relied on industrial efforts due to less active capital markets.

Hiya has more than 200,000 customers in the direct-to-consumer channel, all using subscriptions ordered on the brand’s website, and plans to expand into online marketplaces and retail chains. The startup “offers a compelling subscription model with attractive margins, profitability, and strong cash flow generation,” says USANA CEO Jim Brown.