Deals

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After a sluggish 2025, biotech IPOs have roared back to life. Fueled by resilient stock performances and improving market sentiment, the total number of public debuts so far this year has already eclipsed 2025’s total.
A mostly black box since emerging with more than a billion dollars in hand, Xaira Therapeutics is slowly pulling back the curtain, revealing plans to find partners and validate its pipeline.
IPO
After debuting on the public markets with $256.3 million and raking in an additional $472 million, Veradermics has emerged as one of biotech’s biggest post-IPO standouts. CEO Reid Waldman credits the weight loss craze for establishing consumer-driven channels.
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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.
Just weeks after Pfizer’s Seagen-acquired antibody-drug conjugate sigvotatug vedotin failed a Phase 3 non-small cell lung cancer study, the big pharma has quietly culled another program being developed by the ADC specialist.
Biogen’s new data, presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, supports a tau-focused approach to the intractable neurodegenerative disease; psychedelics are back in the news with more positive data from Compass Pathways and final guidance from the FDA; and the ATTR-CM space got a major shakeup with the late-stage failure of AstraZeneca and Ionis’ antisense therapeutic.
Spero Therapeutics is putting over $1 billion on the line in exchange for rights to develop SP001, an anti-CD40L antibody, for IgG4-related disease. A Phase 2 study is planned for the second quarter of 2027.
Dizal Pharmaceutical’s Zegfrovy is approved in the U.S. for locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer. For $600 million upfront, AstraZeneca will gain global rights to advance and commercialize the asset.
GSK and Hansoh Pharmaceutical’s antibody-drug conjugate success validates their partnership, one of the many deals in which Big Pharma has tapped a China company for promising cancer candidates.
After being bought by Bain for $3.3 billion, Tanabe has reached a deal to sell its manufacturing unit and 17 products.
In AstraZeneca’s third trip to Asia this year, the pharma secured ex-China rights to a dual inhibitor of PDE3 and PDE4, which in a Phase 2b study significantly improved lung function and lowered symptom burden in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder.
A surprising deal from Vertex Pharmaceuticals adds to Big Pharma’s acquisitive streak as Crinetics folds into the cystic fibrosis drugmaker. Meanwhile, IPOs and venture capital raises trend upward, but mostly for derisked companies. Plus, FDA decisions slow only slightly as the hunt for a permanent leader drags on.
Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ acquisition of Crinetics Pharmaceuticals is the largest pickup in the company’s history, according to analysts at BMO Capital Markets.