2024 was a tough year for the biopharma industry, with several companies cutting hundreds or even thousands of employees. Follow along as BioSpace tracks job cuts and restructuring initiatives throughout 2025.
The vaccine space has been battered by strong headwinds in recent weeks, including high-level disruptions to FDA and CDC advisory committee meetings.
Acelyrin and Alumis plan to close their merger in the second quarter of 2025, pending clearances and shareholder approval.
The last few years have been tough for the insulin market, with recent policies and high-level pressure forcing companies to lower drug prices.
Pfizer reacts to Donald Trump’s tariff threats on big pharma, another regulatory meeting is canceled under RFK Jr., AbbVie and Eli Lilly strike mid-sized deals in obesity and molecular glues, priority review vouchers set to take a hit and immuno-oncology matures.
Less than two months after two FDA-related setbacks, Atara Biotherapeutics is again cutting its workforce in half. This time, it’s also hitting pause on two CAR T programs, including one affected by an FDA clinical hold in January.
FEATURED STORIES
Congress did not reauthorize the rare pediatric disease priority review program at the end of 2024. Advocates say the ripple effect is already being felt across biopharma.
Merck’s Keytruda holds on to the top spot while AbbVie’s Humira—once the world’s top-selling drug—continues to cede its market share to biosimilar competitors.
A BioSpace analysis of all 80 priority review vouchers that have been handed out across the three FDA programs that offer them found that 2024 was the busiest year yet. Companies have disclosed spending $513 million on vouchers that were earned in 2024 so far.
FROM BIOSPACE INSIGHTS
Konstantina Katcheves, Senior VP of Innovative Global Business Development at Teva Pharmaceuticals brings insights from the World Economic Forum to SCOPE 2025.
LATEST PODCASTS
Pfizer reacts to Donald Trump’s tariff threats on big pharma, another regulatory meeting is canceled under RFK Jr., AbbVie and Eli Lilly strike mid-sized deals in obesity and molecular glues, priority review vouchers set to take a hit and immuno-oncology matures.
In the second podcast in a special series focused on BioSpace’s NextGen Class of 2025, Senior Editor Annalee Armstrong speaks with Kevin Marks, CEO of Delphia Therapeutics.
In this episode of Denatured, BioSpace’s Head of Insights Lori Ellis and Miruna Sasu, CEO of COTA, discuss life sciences investment and the potential for disruption.
Job Trends
2024 was a tough year for the biopharma industry, with several companies cutting hundreds or even thousands of employees. Follow along as BioSpace tracks job cuts and restructuring initiatives throughout 2025.
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SPECIAL EDITIONS
Year-over-year BioSpace data show there were fewer job postings live on the website in the fourth quarter of 2024, and the decrease was higher than the third quarter’s drop.
The J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference started off with a flurry of deals that reinvigorated excitement across the biopharma industry. Johnson & Johnson moved to acquire Intra-Cellular Therapies for $14.6 billion, breaking a dealmaking barrier that kept Big Pharma’s 2024 biotech buyouts to under $5 billion.
In this deep dive BioSpace explores the opportunities and challenges presented by the FDA’s accelerated approval program.
DEALS
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In a move straight out of 2021, BridgeBio Oncology is taking the SPAC route to the public markets in a deal with Helix Acquisition Corp. II worth $450 million in proceeds. -
In this episode of Denatured, BioSpace’s Head of Insights Lori Ellis and Miruna Sasu, CEO of COTA, discuss life sciences investment and the potential for disruption. -
Our CEO accidentally started a book club. Now we’re all dreaming of mega pharma mergers. -
As high prices and supply issues drive consumers to alternative markets for GLP-1s, physicians aren’t too interested in using these therapies to treat conditions like heart disease risk that have existing cheap standards of care. -
BridGene strikes another partnership with Takeda as the latter company continues its dealmaking streak, following high-ticket agreements with Keros Therapeutics, AC Immune and Degron Therapeutics in the past nine months.
WEIGHT LOSS
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AbbVie is joining the amylin arena, though the pharma is still far behind leaders Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. -
Two recent documents—one from the FDA, the other from a commission organized by The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology—indicate an evolving mindset toward treating obesity as a chronic disease. -
While Kallyope’s drugs are mechanistically unique, the biotech is competing in a crowded space, with other therapies that appear to elicit superior weight-loss. -
The Outsourcing Facilities Association, a trade group representing compounders, filed a similar lawsuit in October last year after the FDA formally ended the tirzepaptide shortage. -
Many of these unlawful and unauthorized shipments were explicitly tagged for compounding, according to a new analysis. Separately, a group of state attorneys general has raised concerns about the unsafe GLP-1 drugs finding their way to American consumers.
FDA
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The approval for the first-line treatment of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma comes shortly after a label expansion for the drug in gastric and gastroesophageal cancers as BeiGene also pushes forward a pipeline of novel cancer therapies. -
TNKase is the first stroke drug to win FDA approval in nearly three decades. -
In the five weeks since Donald Trump returned as U.S. president, the FDA, NIH and CDC have been thrown into disarray, with meetings regarding vaccines and rare diseases canceled or indefinitely postponed—all without a clear reason why. -
ITF, IntraBio and Orchard are among the companies that have won FDA nods in the past year for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Niemann-Pick disease type C, metachromatic leukodystrophy and more. -
Pemgarda has a standing emergency use authorization as a prophylaxis for immunocompromised patients, but FDA’s stringent requirements for antibody activity boxed out its potential use as a post-exposure treatment.
Executive coaches can help executives take their game to the next level in four key ways, from improving their self-awareness to reshaping their thinking.
Plus, how to use your network effectively and create job opportunities before they exist
A BioSpace LinkedIn poll found that job ghosting and ghost jobs are the biggest pet peeves for applicants now. Recruitment Manager Greg Clouse offers advice on dealing with them.
Looking for a biopharma job? Check out the BioSpace list of 12 top companies hiring life sciences professionals like you.
M&As are stressful for multiple reasons, including role changes and getting laid off when staffs combine. Two talent experts share tips for navigating the transition period of your company’s merger or acquisition.
Looking for a biopharma job in New Jersey? Check out the BioSpace list of eight companies hiring life sciences professionals like you.
HOTBEDS
REPORTS
This report investigates anticipated job search activity and hiring outlook for the remainder of 2024.
BioSpace’s third report on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in life sciences examines dramatic shifts in attitude around diversity initiatives.
BioSpace’s 2024 Salary Report explores the average salaries and salary trends of life sciences professionals.
CANCER
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The partners are pushing to expand Enhertu’s list of indications beyond its standing uses in breast, lung and gastric cancers. -
Protagonist Therapeutics notches a milestone in its pact with Takeda for rusfertide. New data show that many patients with a chronic blood cancer taking the drug didn’t need to have their blood removed to bring down dangerously high hemocrit levels. -
More than a decade after Merck’s Keytruda and BMS’ Yervoy ushered in the immuno-oncology revolution, the space is at a crossroads, with experts highlighting novel targets, combinations and pre-emptive immunization as the next wave for IO. -
The company will push through with an accelerated approval application for odronextamab in follicular lymphoma, leaving diffuse large B cell lymphoma behind. -
In the Phase III SERENA-6 trial, camizestrant—in combination with CDK-inhibitors—beat out current standard-of-care treatments in terms of progression-free survival, according to AstraZeneca.
NEUROSCIENCE
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Biohaven in recent months has reported a clinical stumble in spinal muscular atrophy, alongside a Phase I readout for its protein degrader candidate that investors found underwhelming. -
After failing to hit the primary endpoint in a Phase III trial, Neumora is remixing study parameters in two replicate trials, with data expected in the first half of 2026. -
Despite not differentiating itself from placebo, the Texas-based company said it plans to push pilavapadin into Phase III trials before long. -
Leqembi’s application now moves forward to the European Commission, which will issue a formal verdict for the injection that will apply to all EU member states as well as Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland. -
The licensing deal follows years of controversy for Cassava, as well as the high-profile late-stage failure of its Alzheimer’s disease drug simufilam.
CELL AND GENE THERAPY
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The companies were two years into a four-year, $400 million agreement aimed at developing and marketing gene therapies together. -
As FDA seeks to rehire some fired employees, Donald Trump threatens to enact tariffs on pharma companies unless they reshore manufacturing; another lawsuit hits the complex GLP-1 compounding space as Eli Lilly offers expanded Zepbound options; and struggling gene therapy biotech bluebird bio goes private in an attempt to stay solvent. -
At the 2025 National Biotechnology Conference, gene therapies, bispecific antibodies and other novel modalities—relative newcomers to medicine—will be much discussed. In this curtain raiser, BioSpace speaks with conference chair Prathap Nagaraja Shastri of J&J about these highly anticipated topics. -
The treatment, called DB-OTO, is one of several early-stage gene therapies being developed to treat relatively straight-forward causes of genetic deafness. -
The proposed acquisition by global investment firms Carlyle and SK Capital Partners could net shareholders $3 per share plus potential CVR dollars and provide bluebird bio with primary capital to expand the commercial reach of its gene therapies.
