The Latest
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Deep Dive // Emerging biotech
Biotech startups are built on venture capital. Track funding rounds here.
5 drug startups have raised more than $1.4 billion combined this week, continuing an upturn in venture funding that began in September.
Updated Oct. 15, 2025 -
Sponsored by West Pharmaceutical Services
Pioneering perspectives: 4 core principles in drug packaging
Start smart: Early packaging decisions can make or break your drug's market launch. Choose the best packaging and secure the future.
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Novo wagers up to $2.1B on Omeros’ rare disease drug
The deal gives Novo rights to a drug it sees as having "multiple advantages" over other treatments for so-called complement-mediated diseases.
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Obesity drugs
Lilly, battling skepticism, reinforces GLP-1 pill’s case with new study data
Some Wall Street analysts have questioned orforglipron’s sales outlook in obesity, but see great potential in diabetes, where on Wednesday it succeeded in two more late-stage trials.
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California passes laws targeting PBMs, private equity
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an array of healthcare bills into law last week that crack down on pharmacy benefit managers and beef up the review process for deals involving private equity firms.
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Emerging biotech
Cancer drug startup Tubulis raises $361 million for ADCs
The German biotech banked one of the larger funding rounds this year to support an ovarian and non-small cell lung cancer drug that’s being showcased at a medical meeting on Sunday.
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Obesity drugs
Kailera nets $600M more to advance Zepbound-like obesity drug
Among the largest private biotech funding rounds this year, the financing will support global trials of an obesity shot that just succeeded in late-stage testing in China.
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Regeneron, with ‘game-changing’ new data, to seek approval of hearing loss gene therapy
Study results published in The New England Journal of Medicine show the therapy significantly improved hearing in nearly a dozen children with a rare, genetic form of deafness.
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BioCryst goes ‘all in’ on rare swelling disease with Astria deal
A deal valuing the Boston biotech’s stock at $700 million hands BioCryst a long-acting injectable for hereditary angioedema that complements its daily pill.
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News roundup
AstraZeneca cuts US drug pricing deal; FDA declares Novo plant out of compliance
AstraZeneca followed the blueprint of a deal Pfizer recently cut with the White House. Elsewhere, Novo is shuttering its cell therapy division and an investor wants Novavax to sell itself.
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Startup launches
A young biotech nets $70M for a new type of allergy drug
Excellergy is developing medicines that combat allergic responses in three different ways, a multipronged effect the company says could lead to faster and more complete disease control.
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J&J plans to spin out orthopedics business
CEO Joaquin Duato said the spinout will help the healthcare giant focus on medtech areas with higher growth and margins, such as cardiovascular and robotics.
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Immune reset
Bristol’s $1.5B Orbital buyout extends ‘in vivo’ cell therapy deal streak
The acquisition of the well-funded startup is the fourth this year involving companies with technologies that can genetically modify immune cells inside the body.
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Trump administration moves to fire HHS employees amid shutdown
“HHS employees across multiple divisions have received reduction-in-force notices,” an administration spokesperson confirmed. It’s a significant escalation of normal shutdown procedures.
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Novo joins MASH dealmaking surge with $4.7B Akero buyout
The deal is the third acquisition since May involving a drug that could reverse liver scarring in people with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis.
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Deep Dive
Biotech’s M&A outlook is uncertain. Track the deals that are happening here.
BioCryst is acquiring Astria Therapeutics in a cash-and-stock deal that gives the company a long-acting preventive therapy for the rare disease hereditary angioedema.
Updated Oct. 14, 2025 -
News roundup
AstraZeneca ups investment in Virginia; Moderna vets launch VC fund
The British pharma is adding $500 million, and ADC production capabilities, to a planned Virginia facility. Elsewhere, Ferring announced layoffs and Sanofi touted a radiopharmaceutical drug.
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IPO window
Evommune files for IPO to advance immune drug work
The company believes its lead drug, which is currently in mid-stage testing, could address limitations of other therapies for chronic skin hives.
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Deep Dive // Emerging biotech
Biotech IPOs are the industry’s lifeblood. Track how they’re performing.
Evommune on Thursday outlined plans for an offering that would support development of two drugs in mid-stage testing for urticarias and atopic dermatitis.
Updated Oct. 9, 2025 -
Regeneron, needing a turnaround, gains new use for cancer drug
Libtayo’s latest approval for a type of skin cancer should boost future sales, according to one analyst, but doesn’t have the “broad-reaching implications” for Regeneron's Eylea franchise investors had hoped.
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Startup launches
Venture firms pour $101M into a biotech using the brain to fix the immune system
Nilo Therapeutics, which launched Wednesday, is trying to develop drugs that regulate inflammation and the immune system by targeting a special kind of nerve cell.
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Bhagavatheeshwaran, Govind. (2016). "MRI Scan" [Image]. Retrieved from Flickr.China competition
Zenas looks to China to stock pipeline with 3 more immune drugs
A potentially $2 billion deal with InnoCare Pharma hands Zenas rights to a BTK inhibitor in late-stage testing for multiple sclerosis and two other immune medicines in earlier development.
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Deep Dive // Pain drugs
Cancer patients are living longer than ever. Pain drugmakers haven’t kept up.
Decades of slow-moving research, along with broader failures of the healthcare system, have left millions of people in daily pain. Doctors fear that’s bound to continue.
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Emerging biotech
Arthrosi snags $153M in pursuit of a new gout drug
The company is one of a handful developing a more “selective” URAT1 inhibitor, an approach that’s seen as a way to improve upon existing therapies.
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Ermath, Michael. (2020). "Individualized Therapies Workshop" [Photograph]. Retrieved from Flickr.
Peter Marks, former top FDA vaccine official, joins Eli Lilly
Six months after his abrupt resignation as CBER director, Marks has been hired to run discovery and infectious disease work at the big Indianapolis drugmaker.
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Boehringer Ingelheim drug wins FDA OK in tough-to-treat lung disease
The clearance makes Jascayd the first new drug for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in over a decade, but some analysts see it as a “modest” advance in care.