Mergers & acquisitions
Calls for Regeneron to step up dealmaking have intensified as the company has established an $18 billion cash pile and suffered clinical trial setbacks.
Reverse mergers and acquisitions remain a viable path to the public market for venture-backed biotechs, with Caldera Therapeutics and Vidya Therapeutics announcing separate deals on Wednesday to advance immunology and inflammation assets.
Biogen officially began reporting revenue from the $5.6 billion acquisition of Apellis in the second quarter, shaking up analysts’ consensus estimates and leading to a beat.
The star of the takeover is Forte Biosciences’ investigational antibody therapy, FB102, which has shown early potential in vitiligo and celiac disease.
Eli Lilly’s $3.8 billion play for AtaiBeckley has fueled speculation that Big Pharma is ready to embrace psychedelics. But while the acquisition does validate the drug class, analysts say it is unlikely to trigger a broad wave of Big Pharma deals.
With fewer biopharmas making or planning workforce reductions so far year over year, layoff round size and M&A impact on headcounts will likely shape the number of employees who are ultimately on the chopping block.
Second quarter earnings continue to roll with Novartis and Roche reporting this week; Eli Lilly’s AtaiBeckley buy for up to $3.8 billion offers clear “validation” for the fledgling psychedelics space; more drama unfolds at FDA as the agency goes back and forth on its policy of publishing complete response letters in real-time; and IPO fever continues.
With PolyPeptide manufacturing peptides such as GLP-1 medicines, Samsung Biologics has identified the deal as a way to tap into fast-growing demand for obesity drug production services.
Eli Lilly’s proposed acquisition of AtaiBeckley is “the clearest strategic validation to date” of psychedelics as an emerging pharmaceutical category, according to H.C. Wainwright. The analyst cautioned, however, that the transaction should not be seen as “supporting a uniform re-rating of every psychedelic developer.”
With the AtaiBeckley acquisition, Eli Lilly is jumping into psychedelics, a drug class that Jefferies analysts say could herald the “biggest change” for the field of psychiatry.
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