Chinese drugmakers have signed a late-year burst of out-licensing agreements with overseas partners, underlining China’s growing role as a source of novel medicines as multinational pharma groups hunt for new assets.
Jacobio Pharmaceuticals said it expected to receive an upfront payment of US$100 million from AstraZeneca, according to a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange on December 21.

The British-Swedish drugmaker was paying for exclusive rights to research, develop, register, manufacture and commercialise Jacobio’s experimental cancer therapy JAB-23E73 in markets worldwide, excluding mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

Jacobio could also earn up to US$1.92 billion in milestone payments linked to development, regulatory and commercial targets, and would receive tiered royalties on sales.

JAB-23E73 is an oral pill designed to inhibit KRAS, a mutated protein that can fuel tumour growth, while sparing closely related “good” proteins – an approach intended to reduce side effects.

The drug is currently in Phase I human trials in China and the United States.

Coherent Biopharma, meanwhile, had also struck a cross-border partnership, signing an exclusive licensing deal on December 22 with US-based MultiValent Biotherapies for CBP-1018, a prostate cancer candidate.

Under the agreement, MultiValent gained exclusive rights to develop and commercialise CBP-1018 outside Greater China, while Coherent would receive an upfront payment of US$20 million and a 20 per cent equity stake in MultiValent.

The deal also included potential milestone payments of up to about US$2 billion and tiered royalties on future sales.

The latest transactions reflect a broader pattern of multinational drugmakers turning to Chinese biotechs for pipeline replenishment, particularly as the industry grapples with pricing pressure and looming patent expiries.

“We remain bullish on China’s biotech out-licensing trend, though sizeable deals may be light over the next six to eight months, as biotechs accumulate more clinical data or await assets to enter later stage,” said Cui Cui, head of Asia healthcare research at Jefferies, in a recent note.

“Multinational drug corporations face mounting pressure from drug pricing and patent cliffs, while Chinese firms continue to prove quality and efficiency after a decade of effort,” she added.
Earlier this month, Harbour BioMed also teamed up with Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) in a multi-year global partnership focused on discovering and developing next-generation multi-specific antibodies – drugs engineered to bind to more than one target on cancer cells to enhance therapeutic effect.

Under the agreement announced on December 17, Harbour BioMed would work with BMS to advance multi-specific antibody discovery programmes in return for US$90 million in upfront payments, potential milestone payments of up to US$1 billion, and tiered royalties if BMS elected to pursue the programmes.

China has been rolling out policies aimed at bolstering homegrown biopharmaceutical groups as out-licensing activity gathers pace.

Authorities have identified biomanufacturing as a future economic pillar, and the country has also introduced its first commercial insurance “innovative drug list”, part of an effort to improve access and affordability for a population of more than 1.4 billion.

Antibiotic resistance is steadily eroding one of modern medicine’s most essential tools. Each year, more than a million people lose their lives to infections that were once easily treatable, a reminder that our current drugs are no longer keeping pace with evolving bacteria. Without new antibiotics, everyday medical procedures—from joint replacements to cancer therapies—carry a growing risk of infections that may no longer respond to treatment. The need for fresh solutions isn’t hypothetical; it’s a practical requirement for maintaining the safety of routine healthcare.

To combat drug-resistant infections, researchers from the University of York, led by Angelo Frei, PhD, have turned to metal-based compounds for answers. Using a cutting-edge robotic system capable of synthesizing hundreds of metal complexes, they hoped to develop a screening method for metal-based antibiotic candidates. In a study published in Nature Communications titled “High-throughput triazole-based combinatorial click chemistry for the synthesis and identification of functional metal complexes,” their rapid screening process identified an iridium-based antibiotic candidate that shows promise in human cells to kill bacteria while remaining nontoxic.

“The pipeline for new antibiotics has been running dry for decades. Traditional screening methods are slow and the pharmaceutical industry has largely withdrawn from this space due to low returns on investment. We have to think differently,” said Frei.

This high-throughput combinatorial approach uses copper(I)-catalyzed alkyne–azide cycloaddition chemistry to make triazole ligands. Although most modern carbon-based antibiotic molecules are “flat,” these metal complexes are three-dimensional, allowing them to interact with bacteria in completely different ways that could potentially overcome the resistance mechanisms.

The Frei lab used robotics and a method where two molecular compounds are bolted together, called “click” chemistry. “This ligand library is coordinated to five metal scaffolds under mild conditions to yield 672 metal compounds, allowing for the accelerated exploration of the transition metal complex chemical space,” wrote the authors. David Husbands, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the Frei lab, used this automated platform to combine almost 200 triazole ligands.

The team then screened these compounds for both antibacterial activity and toxicity in human embryonic kidney cells (HEK293T), identifying six promising metalloantibiotics. After a transfer hydrogenation screening assay and resynthesis, one iridium-based compound showed high effectiveness against bacteria with low toxicity.

“By combining smart ‘click’ chemistry with automation, we have demonstrated that we can explore vast, untapped areas of chemical space at unprecedented speed. We aren’t just looking for one drug; we are proving a methodology that can help us find the ‘needle in the haystack’ much faster. The iridium compound we discovered is exciting, but the real breakthrough is the speed at which we found it. This approach could be the key to avoiding a future where routine infections become fatal again,” added Frei.

While metal-based compounds have held a reputation of being inherently toxic, new data puts this long-held assumption into question. With hopes that this new methodology will encourage the wider scientific community and pharmaceutical companies to revisit metal complexes, the team’s next steps are to understand how the iridium compound kills bacteria, with plans to expand their platform to test other metals.

Analysts called the approval a much-needed win for Novo Nordisk, but warned that the company could struggle to grow sales once rival drugs come to market.
The FDA has approved Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill for weight management, making the product the first oral GLP-1 treatment for people who are overweight or have obesity in the U.S.

Novo’s pill contains 25 mg of semaglutide, the GLP-1 receptor agonist found in the injectable version of Wegovy and its diabetes-indicated sibling Ozempic. The FDA approved the product based on data including a Phase III trial that linked the Wegovy pill to 16.6% mean weight loss. Patients lost similar amounts of weight on the once-daily oral and once-weekly injectable formulations of Wegovy.

BMO Capital Markets analysts said in a note to investors that the approval is “a much-needed win in light of recent challenges maintaining incretin market share dominance.” Having initially led the GLP-1 market, Novo has lost ground amid competition from injectables sold by Eli Lilly and compounding pharmacies.

The oral launch, which is set for early January, again establishes Novo as the first entrant to a potentially lucrative market. “Novo will likely benefit from first-mover advantage, capturing patients with a preference for convenience and comfort provided by an oral dosing regimen,” BMO analysts said.

Yet Novo may have a short window in which to capitalize on its first-mover advantage. Lilly has filed for FDA approval of its oral GLP-1 candidate orforglipron and has a Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher that could accelerate regulatory review. Ilya Yuffa, president of Lilly USA, said at a Citi conference this month that the company expects to launch orforglipron early in the second quarter of 2026.

This suggests Novo may have just a few months to establish a foothold in the oral GLP-1 market before facing competition. Average weight loss on orforglipron in a Phase III trial was 12.4%, compared to 13.7% on injectable Wegovy, according to results released in August. Lilly’s shares initially fell 7% in response to the data, although analysts have since become more bullish in their expectations for orforglipron.

BMO analysts see orforglipron and other oral GLP-1 candidates as threats to the Wegovy pill. The analysts said the Wegovy pill’s food effect, which prevents patients from eating, drinking or taking other oral medications for 30 minutes after dosing, “is likely to limit uptake upon approval of orforglipron and other orals with more convenient profiles.”

The analysts expect investors to focus on Wegovy pill sales in 2026, “especially early in the launch when no true competition exists.” BMO’s team named data from a head-to-head trial of Novo’s CagriSema and Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Mounjaro and Zepbound, expected in early 2026, as another focus of investor interest.

Many investors expect Novo’s drug combination, which is under review at the FDA, to match tirzepatide, the analysts said. With noninferiority the baseline expectation, there is scope for perceptions of Novo to improve if CagriSema can beat tirzepatide. Yet BMO analysts said they are cautious because early CagriSema results have underperformed most expectations.

A high-fat diet is one of the biggest risk factors for developing liver cancer. Now, a new study reveals a potential mechanism underlying this. The team found that, in response to a high-fat diet, mature hepatocytes in the liver revert to an immature, stem-cell-like state. Although this helps the cells survive the stressful conditions created by the high-fat diet, it makes them more likely to become cancerous in the long term.

“If cells are forced to deal with a stressor, such as a high-fat diet, over and over again, they will do things that will help them survive, but at the risk of increased susceptibility to tumorigenesis,” says Alex K. Shalek, PhD, director of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Sciences (IMES), professor in IMES and the Department of Chemistry, and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT.

The researchers also identified several transcription factors that appear to control this reversion, which they believe could make good targets for drugs to help prevent tumor development in high-risk patients.

This work is published in Cell in the paper, “Hepatic adaptation to chronic metabolic stress primes tumorigenesis.”

A high-fat diet can lead to inflammation and buildup of fat in the liver, a condition known as steatotic liver disease. This disease, which can also be caused by a wide variety of long-term metabolic stresses such as high alcohol consumption, may lead to liver cirrhosis, liver failure, and eventually cancer. In the new study, the researchers sought to uncover which genes get turned on or off as the liver responds to this long-term stress.

To do that, the researchers fed mice a high-fat diet and performed single-cell RNA-sequencing of their liver cells at key timepoints as liver disease progressed. They monitored gene expression changes that occurred as the mice advanced through liver inflammation, to tissue scarring and eventually cancer.

In the early stages of this progression, the researchers found that the high-fat diet prompted hepatocytes, the most abundant cell type in the liver, to turn on genes that make them more resistant to apoptosis and more likely to proliferate. At the same time, those cells began to turn off some of the genes that are critical for normal hepatocyte function, including metabolic enzymes and secreted proteins.

“This really looks like a trade-off, prioritizing what’s good for the individual cell to stay alive in a stressful environment, at the expense of what the collective tissue should be doing,” said Constantine Tzouanas, a graduate student in the Shalek lab.

Some of these changes happened right away, while others, including a decline in metabolic enzyme production, shifted more gradually over a longer period. Nearly all of the mice on a high-fat diet ended up developing liver cancer by the end of the study.

When cells are in a more immature state, it appears that they are more likely to become cancerous if a mutation occurs later on, the researchers say.

“These cells have already turned on the same genes that they’re going to need to become cancerous. They’ve already shifted away from the mature identity that would otherwise drag down their ability to proliferate,” Tzouanas says. “Once a cell picks up the wrong mutation, then it’s really off to the races and they’ve already gotten a head start on some of those hallmarks of cancer.”

The researchers also identified several genes that appear to orchestrate the changes that revert hepatocytes to an immature state. While this study was going on, a drug targeting one of these genes (thyroid hormone receptor) was approved to treat a severe form of steatotic liver disease called MASH fibrosis. And, a drug activating an enzyme that they identified (HMGCS2) is now in clinical trials to treat steatotic liver disease.

Another possible target that the new study revealed is a transcription factor called SOX4, which is normally only active during fetal development and in a small number of adult tissues (but not the liver).

After the researchers identified these changes in mice, they sought to discover if something similar might be happening in human patients with liver disease. To do that, they analyzed data from liver tissue samples removed from patients at different stages of the disease. They also looked at tissue from people who had liver disease but had not yet developed cancer.

Those studies revealed a similar pattern to what the researchers had seen in mice: The expression of genes needed for normal liver function decreased over time, while genes associated with immature states went up. Additionally, the researchers found that they could accurately predict patients’ survival outcomes based on an analysis of their gene expression patterns.

“Patients who had higher expression of these pro-cell-survival genes that are turned on with high-fat diet survived for less time after tumors developed,” Tzouanas says. “And if a patient has lower expression of genes that support the functions that the liver normally performs, they also survive for less time.”

While the mice in this study developed cancer within a year or so, the researchers estimate that in humans, the process likely extends over a longer span, possibly around 20 years. That will vary between individuals depending on their diet and other risk factors such as alcohol consumption or viral infections, which can also promote liver cells’ reversion to an immature state.

The researchers now plan to investigate whether any of the changes that occur in response to a high-fat diet can be reversed by going back to a normal diet, or by taking weight-loss drugs such as GLP-1 agonists. They also hope to study whether any of the transcription factors they identified could make good targets for drugs that could help prevent diseased liver tissue from becoming cancerous.

“We now have all these new molecular targets and a better understanding of what is underlying the biology, which could give us new angles to improve outcomes for patients,” Shalek says.

Analysts called the approval a much-needed win for Novo Nordisk, but warned that the company could struggle to grow sales once rival drugs come to market.

The FDA has approved Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill for weight management, making the product the first oral GLP-1 treatment for people who are overweight or have obesity in the U.S.

Novo’s pill contains 25 mg of semaglutide, the GLP-1 receptor agonist found in the injectable version of Wegovy and its diabetes-indicated sibling Ozempic. The FDA approved the product based on data including a Phase III trial that linked the Wegovy pill to 16.6% mean weight loss. Patients lost similar amounts of weight on the once-daily oral and once-weekly injectable formulations of Wegovy.

BMO Capital Markets analysts said in a note to investors that the approval is “a much-needed win in light of recent challenges maintaining incretin market share dominance.” Having initially led the GLP-1 market, Novo has lost ground amid competition from injectables sold by Eli Lilly and compounding pharmacies.

The oral launch, which is set for early January, again establishes Novo as the first entrant to a potentially lucrative market. “Novo will likely benefit from first-mover advantage, capturing patients with a preference for convenience and comfort provided by an oral dosing regimen,” BMO analysts said.

Yet Novo may have a short window in which to capitalize on its first-mover advantage. Lilly has filed for FDA approval of its oral GLP-1 candidate orforglipron and has a Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher that could accelerate regulatory review. Ilya Yuffa, president of Lilly USA, said at a Citi conference this month that the company expects to launch orforglipron early in the second quarter of 2026.

This suggests Novo may have just a few months to establish a foothold in the oral GLP-1 market before facing competition. Average weight loss on orforglipron in a Phase III trial was 12.4%, compared to 13.7% on injectable Wegovy, according to results released in August. Lilly’s shares initially fell 7% in response to the data, although analysts have since become more bullish in their expectations for orforglipron.

BMO analysts see orforglipron and other oral GLP-1 candidates as threats to the Wegovy pill. The analysts said the Wegovy pill’s food effect, which prevents patients from eating, drinking or taking other oral medications for 30 minutes after dosing, “is likely to limit uptake upon approval of orforglipron and other orals with more convenient profiles.”

The analysts expect investors to focus on Wegovy pill sales in 2026, “especially early in the launch when no true competition exists.” BMO’s team named data from a head-to-head trial of Novo’s CagriSema and Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Mounjaro and Zepbound, expected in early 2026, as another focus of investor interest.

Many investors expect Novo’s drug combination, which is under review at the FDA, to match tirzepatide, the analysts said. With noninferiority the baseline expectation, there is scope for perceptions of Novo to improve if CagriSema can beat tirzepatide. Yet BMO analysts said they are cautious because early CagriSema results have underperformed most expectations.

Analysts said the outcome is disappointing because there are no approved treatments for dyskinetic cerebral palsy, but the setback had little impact on Neurocrine’s valuation.

A Phase III trial of Neurocrine Biosciences’ valbenazine in dyskinetic cerebral palsy has missed its primary and key secondary endpoints.

The study randomized children and adults with the nonprogressive neurodevelopmental disorder to take either valbenazine, which Neurocrine sells as Ingrezza in other indications, or placebo orally once a day for 14 weeks. Neurocrine’s primary endpoint looked at changes in the severity of chorea, the involuntary, jerky movements associated with the condition, from baseline to the final two weeks of the trial.

San Diego-based Neurocrine said the trial missed its primary endpoint but has yet to share data. Secondary endpoints tracked the effect of valbenazine on other motor symptom measures and different aspects of dyskinetic cerebral palsy (DCP).

William Blair analysts said in a note to investors that the failure is disappointing because there are no approved treatments for DCP. While Neurocrine’s press release lacked a comment on the future of valbenazine in DCP, the analysts removed the indication from their assessment of the value of the vesicular monoamine transporter 2 inhibitor.

DCP was a small part of the Neurocrine valuation calculated by the analysts, who said the removal of the opportunity had a minimal impact on their target share price or thesis. Neurocrine shares fell 1.55% to $145.25 in premarket trading Tuesday. The analysts said investors will be focused on the company’s execution and commercial performance in 2026.

Neurocrine markets Ingrezza in tardive dyskinesia and chorea associated with Huntington’s disease. Product sales rose 12% to $687 million in the third quarter. Investors saw the Inflation Reduction Act negotiations for Teva Pharmaceuticals’ rival drug Austedo as a potential headwind for Ingrezza going into the reveal of the new price last month.

With Teva agreeing to a 38% price cut, BMO Capital Markets analysts said in a note to investors that the “relatively low discount” reads as a positive for Neurocrine’s Ingrezza. Eric Benevich, Neurocrine’s chief commercial officer, said at a Piper Sandler event this month that the situation is “very manageable,” adding that the company expects to maintain coverage in 2027 and continue to grow.

The launch of Crenessity, which won FDA approval in congenital adrenal hyperplasia one year ago, is the company’s other commercial focus. Neurocrine reported Crenessity sales of $98 million in the third quarter. Matt Abernethy, Neurocrine’s chief financial officer, said at the Piper Sandler event that the company is “not satisfied with where we’re at” with the drug, adding that “we’re going to accelerate that path to peak.”

Beyond its commercial drugs, Neurocrine has late-stage programs in neuropsychiatry and an early-stage pipeline in obesity that it discussed at a recent R&D day. BMO analysts said the event featured “positive neuropsych updates followed by puzzling disclosures around new efforts in obesity.” The analysts expressed concern about Neurocrine’s ability to generate a return on investment in the fast-moving obesity field.

A push to reshore some drug production and progress in advanced manufacturing technologies have been prominent trends this year, industry leaders say.

In 2025, the question of where medicines are made went mainstream. Once largely discussed in business terms within pharma companies, the question gained traction as the Trump administration, citing national security and sovereignty, unleashed a barrage of actions to pressure drugmakers to reshore production.

Leaders working in different parts of the production process independently called out the supply chain conversation as the trend that defined pharma manufacturing in 2025. Brian Doty, vice president of R&D and programs at the nonprofit API Innovation Center (APIIC), told BioSpace via email that the “growing urgency around reshoring critical generic medicines” was a key shift in 2025.

Doty pointed to President Donald Trump’s executive orders—including a call to bolster a stockpile of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), purchasing from domestic manufacturers where possible—and a Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing that spotlighted U.S. companies making essential generic medications domestically.

Heavily prescribed generic drugs that rely on foreign APIs were a particular focus of these actions, Doty said. The APIIC leader attributed the development to “a growing recognition of our nation’s overreliance on foreign suppliers as a national health security risk.”

John Murphy, CEO of the Association for Accessible Medicines (AAM), an industry group for makers of generics and biosimilars, made a similar point. He told BioSpace that the realization the U.S. needs to prioritize manufacturing was his top trend of 2025. The acknowledgment has emerged in lockstep with rising understanding that the U.S. has medicine supply vulnerabilities because “we don’t make much here,” Murphy said.

“We lead the world in generic drug shortages because of our problematic reimbursement system for medicines,” he added. “We have very little capacity to manufacture API and [key starting materials] here in the United States, and so we are wholly reliant on a number of trading partners.”

The U.S. has little capacity because it has let its generic and biosimilar manufacturing base “atrophy,” Murphy said. The tariff debate brought on by the Trump administration has sparked wider awareness of the situation, he said, and the resulting conversation was “very illuminating” for the healthcare sector.

Doty believes the message has reached healthcare systems, industry and government. “It has been encouraging to see how quickly stakeholders have recognized the value of modernizing U.S.-based pharmaceutical manufacturing,” he said. Murphy and Doty are each now working to turn recognition into action. That process remains a work in progress as 2025 draws to a close.

“Our nation’s overdependence on foreign API supply for some of the most commonly prescribed generic drugs persists, and few backup options are available when disruptions occur,” Doty said.

Advanced Therapy Sector Seeks Scale

Doty sees continuous flow and other advanced manufacturing technologies as part of the answer to the question of how to reshore API production. In the cell and gene therapy field, companies turned to advanced manufacturing technologies in 2025 to answer the question of how to improve scalability and reduce production costs.

Fabian Gerlinghaus, Cellares’ co-founder and CEO, told BioSpace via email that “the defining challenge of 2025 was the industry’s realization that scaling complex, labor-intensive manufacturing workflows across fragile supply chains is no longer commercially viable.” Multiple cell and gene therapies have struggled commercially, in part because of a reliance on expensive, poorly scalable manufacturing processes.

David Dismuke, chief technical officer at Forge Biologics, shared an upbeat assessment of work to tackle the challenge, telling BioSpace via email that 2025 was “a turning point where several long-anticipated manufacturing improvements finally translated into measurable performance gains.” Dismuke named yield-boosting additives known as enhancers, improved media for cell growth and improved plasmid designs as innovations that have boosted productivity.

“These advancements matter because they expand the kinds of programs gene therapy developers can target. As manufacturing performance improves, developers can pursue programs for larger populations and more prevalent diseases that were previously out of reach,” Dismuke said. “We are already seeing this shift among some of our own clients, such as Fractyl Health, which is developing an AAV-based gene therapy aimed at metabolic diseases like obesity and type 2 diabetes.”

Regulators appear to support the changes. Gerlinghaus said the most unexpected development in 2025 was “the speed and clarity with which U.S. regulators embraced advanced manufacturing.” In the year the Advanced Manufacturing Technologies (AMT) program began to take shape, Gerlinghaus said the pace of action “was significantly faster than anticipated” and showed the FDA is serious about supporting change. The AMT is a new designation aimed at streamlining the regulatory process for early adopters of new technologies.

Just how far the advanced therapy field has come became clear in May when news emerged that a nine-month-old boy with an ultrarare disease had received a CRISPR treatment made just for him. John Maslowski, president and CEO of Forge, told BioSpace via email that the Baby KJ case showed “something fundamentally new: the ability to build a therapy even when there was no roadmap.”

To Maslowski, the story showed “rapid design, rapid manufacturing and rapid regulatory coordination for an individual patient is possible.” The significance of the case could extend beyond KJ, he said, as it demonstrates the emergence of “a new way to think about platforms and manufacturing systems that can flex to meet the needs of any patient.”

“Urgency around pharmaceutical resilience has grown significantly,” Doty said. “The coming year will be about putting those solutions into action across the industry.”

Leerink analysts hailed the deals as a sign that President Trump “is unlikely to attack the industry in 2026.”
The Trump Administration has struck Most Favored Nation drug pricing agreements with nine more large biopharma companies.

Amgen, Bristol Myers Squibb, Boehringer Ingelheim, Genentech, Gilead Sciences, GSK, Merck, Novartis and Sanofi are the latest companies to reach agreements with the White House. With AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, EMD Serono, Novo Nordisk and Pfizer having previously reached similar deals, most of the largest drugmakers in the U.S. are now covered by MFN deals.

Truist Securities analysts said in a note to investors that they view the agreements “as signaling that pricing and tariff uncertainty is now stabilized, supporting potential positive sector momentum into the new year.” Leerink Partners analysts reached a similar conclusion, writing in a note to investors that President Donald Trump “is unlikely to attack the industry in 2026.”

The terms of the nine new deals are broadly in line with expectations, Truist analysts said. They added that the scope is limited to Medicaid pricing, and there is an emphasis on direct-to-patient platforms and commitments to invest in U.S. manufacturing and R&D.

While the broad focus of the deals is similar, the details are specific to each company. Leerink analysts said BMS will offer its blockbuster anticoagulant Eliquis to Medicaid for free, but the financial impact should be limited. Medicaid accounts for less than 5% of U.S. revenue for the drug, BMS told the analysts, and it is already “very heavily rebated.”

Leerink analysts said Merck’s deal appears positive for the company. Merck has agreed to make its oral PCSK9 inhibitor enlicitide “broadly available as an affordable option,” which Leerink analysts said is aligned with the company’s “pre-existing strategy to drive revenue by pricing for broad access.” The company will offer the cholesterol-lowering drug through direct-to-patient programs once it is approved. The therapy garnered a Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher last week.

BMS said it will not be subject to future pricing mandates. Leerink analysts said other companies did not make similar claims in their press releases. The analysts confirmed with Gilead and Merck that they will also not be subject to future pricing mandates.

Johnson & Johnson is a notable omission from the list of companies that have reached agreements with the White House. The company told analysts that it is “actively and positively engaged in discussion with the administration,” the Leerink team said.

At a press conference about the nine agreements, Trump said J&J will announce its agreement with the administration next week. He added that J&J and “four other very big companies” have joined their peers in agreeing to offer MFN prices.

Jacobio discovered JAB-23E73, which is designed to treat several KRAS mutation subtypes, and is testing the therapy in multiple Phase I trials.
AstraZeneca has found another potential gold nugget in China, this time offering as much as $2 billion to Jacobio Pharma to work on an early-stage pan-KRAS inhibitor.

The focus of the deal is JAB-23E73, which is designed to treat multiple KRAS mutation subtypes, according to a Sunday press release. The therapy is already being tested in Phase I trials in China and the U.S. and has exhibited antitumor behavior.

The U.K. pharma is offering Jacobio $100 million upfront, with $1.9 billion worth of milestones plus royalties down the line. AstraZeneca will lead clinical development, regulatory submissions and commercialization outside of China. The companies will jointly develop the therapy in China, where AstraZeneca has a large presence.

KRAS was long considered an undruggable target until Mirati Therapeutics and Amgen finally broke it in 2021. Amgen’s Lumakras is now approved for lung cancer and colorectal cancer. Mirati, meanwhile, secured approval for Krazati in 2022 and was bought by Bristol Myers Squibb in 2024.

Jacobio discovered JAB-23E73 using its induced allosteric drug discovery platform, which targets undruggable proteins. In addition to JAB-23E73, the company has a KRAS G12C inhibitor called glecirasib that’s been approved in China for pancreatic cancer.

The biotech signed an agreement with AbbVie in 2020 to develop SHP2 inhibitors, and has deals with both Merck KGaA and Merck & Co.

AstraZeneca has been on a deal spree in China. The company offered up to $5.3 billion to CSPC Pharmaceutical in June to work on small molecule drugs for chronic disease.

Beyond deals, AstraZeneca plans to invest billions in China over the next five years, including a new global strategic R&D center. That March announcement came amid political pressure from the U.S. to bring manufacturing back, and an insurance fraud probe into one of AstraZeneca’s former China executives.

Stifel analysts said the label for cardiac myosin inhibitor Myqorzo is in line with their expectations and is differentiated compared with BMS’ Camzyos.

Cytokinetics has won FDA approval of its cardiac myosin inhibitor, positioning the biotech to challenge Bristol Myers Squibb for the heart disease market.

The approval covers aficamten in adults with symptomatic obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (oHCM), an inherited disease that causes thickening of the heart muscles. People with oHCM have symptoms including shortness of breath. Cytokinetics, which calls the newly approved product Myqorzo, won approval after linking the molecule to significantly improved exercise capacity in patients with the disease.

With analysts expecting Cytokinetics to win approval, the details of the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) were a key focus going into the decision. The FDA delayed the review by three months in May to give itself time to review the biotech’s REMS proposal.

Data from the MAPLE-HCM study, presented at the 2025 European Society of Cardiology Congress in September, showed that after 24 weeks of treatment, patients on aficamten saw a 1.1-mL/kg/min increase in pVO2, a measure of oxygen supply that indicates exercise capacity. Counterparts on the standard-of-care beta-blocker metoprolol saw a 1.2 mL/kg/min decrease in pVO2 over the same time span.

Stifel analysts said in a note to investors that the approved REMS is in line with their expectations and is differentiated compared with BMS’ Camzyos. Cytokinetics’ REMS gives physicians the flexibility to titrate as early as two weeks and perform echocardiogram assessments two to eight weeks after dose initiation and any subsequent dose change. A patient’s dosing may be titrated after each echo with no delay.