M&A Ticks Up, ASCO Excites and Vaccines Cause More Drama

The words of the week so far in biopharma are “deals” and “cancer”—or, more specifically, money being invested in cancer and other key therapeutic areas. With the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual conference underway in Chicago, Bristol Myers Squibb got in the PD-1/PD-L1xVEGF game, paying potentially more than $11 billion to co-develop BioNTech’s solid tumor bispecific BNT327. 

Elsewhere, Sanofi nabbed the year’s second-biggest buyout, picking up Blueprint for $9.5 billion, expanding its rare disease portfolio. And Regeneron plunked down up to $2 billion to license a dual GLP-1/GIP receptor agonist from Chinese biopharma Hansoh Pharmaceuticals Group.  

Back in Chicago, presentations by AstraZeneca, Gilead and Amgen drew rave reviews from investor analysts, while Pfizer and Arvinas elaborated on mixed data from a PROTAC that showed positive results in only a subsection of breast cancer patients, failing to impress Wall Street. Meanwhile, Bicara’s solid survival stats in head and neck cancer weren’t enough to clear the high bar set by rival Merus. At the meeting, BioSpace’s own Dan Samorodnitsky sat down with Jazz Pharmaceuticals’ CMO Rob Iannone to discuss the company’s recently acquired pediatric glioma drug, and talked AI strategy with AstraZeneca’s head of U.S. oncology for lung cancer Arun Krishna. Dan recaps his ASCO experience here.  

Speaking of buzzy therapeutic spaces, there was more action on the vaccines front last week as Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. announced that healthy children and healthy pregnant women would no longer be advised to get vaccinated against COVID-19. However, as of publication, the CDC still recommends a COVID vaccine for healthy children but instead of a universal recommendation advises that the decision should be made between parents and healthcare providers. Against this backdrop, the FDA signed off on Moderna’s next-gen COVID-19 vaccine, mNEXSPIKE, for a limited population in line with its new guidelines. This was a much-needed win for Moderna, which last week had a $760 million-plus government contract for its mRNA-based bird flu vaccine terminated.  

Also on the policy front, the Trump administration released its Make America Healthy Again report last week to much scrutiny after reports found studies and references that did not exist.