Alector has licensed its brain-penetrant GCase programme to Roche in a deal worth $1.27 billion. Alector focuses on brain-penetrant antibodies, siRNA and enzyme replacement therapies, with five pipeline programmes expected to reach the clinic from 2027. Its ABC brain-penetrant platform targets a unique TfR epitope that blocks FcγR co-engagement, unlike approaches from Roche, Denali and others.
CSL has struck a global partnership with Swiss biotech Alentis to develop lixudebart, an antibody targeting claudin-1, in kidney disease. The deal includes $355 million upfront plus up to $1.2 billion in commercial milestones, for a total of up to $1.555 billion. Lixudebart is designed to act on the cell-surface claudin-1 protein with both anti-inflammatory and anti-fibrotic effects.
Shionogi has agreed to acquire IntraBio, a biotech founded in Oxford and now headquartered in Austin, Texas, for $2 billion. The deal gives the Japanese company Aqneursa, IntraBio's newly approved therapy for a rare genetic disease. The acquisition extends Shionogi's push beyond its traditional anti-infectives business into rare diseases.
Eli Lilly has expanded its alliance with Gate Bioscience in a deal worth up to more than $870 million, adding one new target with the option of a second to their existing collaboration on Gate's Molecular Gate discovery engine for difficult-to-drug extracellular proteins. Gate, which signed an initial deal with Lilly worth up to $856 million in July 2025, will receive an undisclosed upfront payment plus payments on preclinical, clinical and commercial milestones and tiered royalties. Gate leads discovery while Lilly takes an exclusive worldwide license and handles development from later-stage preclinical work through commercialization; no indications have been disclosed.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Peter Hegemann, Georg Nagel and Karl Deisseroth for optogenetics, a light-based method for studying neurons. Alector licensed its preclinical Parkinson's therapy AL050 to Roche's Genentech for $100 million in guaranteed cash and up to $1.17 billion in milestones plus royalties. Separately, the FDA approved Lilly's Jaypirca as a first-line treatment for CLL or SLL patients without a 17p deletion.
Novartis has granted... Novartis has secured an exclusive worldwide licence from AiBo Biotech (AiBo) to ABO2203, a T-cell engager molecule and the company's lead pipeline candidate, plus options to license further projects from AiBo's proprietary RNA platform. AiBo receives an upfront payment of 3.8 billion yuan and is eligible for up to about 7.2 billion in milestone payments if all options are exercised and development, regulatory and commercialisation milestones are met, plus royalties on future sales.
Novo Nordisk has licensed HRS-1596, a GLP-1/GIP dual receptor agonist developed by Hengrui for weight loss and blood glucose control, gaining exclusive rights to develop, manufacture and commercialize it outside greater China. Hengrui receives an upfront payment of $300 million, with the deal worth up to $2.6 billion in total plus royalties on net sales. The drug has potential in obesity, type 2 diabetes and other metabolic diseases.
Dizhe Pharmaceutical granted AstraZeneca exclusive worldwide rights to develop and commercialize its drug Shuwozhe under a license agreement signed on July 13, 2026. Dizhe receives a one-time, non-refundable $600 million upfront payment, up to $400 million in clinical development milestone payments, up to $500 million in sales milestone payments, plus tiered royalties on global sales at rates rising to the low double digits.
InnoCare's wholly owned subsidiary Beijing InnoCare Pharmaceutical Technology has signed a research collaboration and license agreement with Eli Lilly and Company. InnoCare will use its proprietary drug discovery platform to discover and develop up to five novel target programs. Lilly will pay up to $100 million upfront and in near-term milestones, plus about $3.25 billion in potential development and commercialization milestone payments.
Circle Pharma raised a $92.5 million series E, announced Sept. 16, to advance preclinical cyclin D1 inhibitor CID-165 toward a planned clinical start in early 2027, making it the company's top priority over cyclin A/B inhibitor CID-078, which continues in Phase I. CEO David Earp said preclinical combination data drove the decision, with the aim of producing deeper responses in ER-positive breast cancer.
Novartis has signed a license agreement with Abogen Bio for ABO2203, an mRNA-encoded CD19xCD3 T cell engager, paying $575 million up front with potential milestone payments of $7.2 billion. Novartis views ABO2203 as mechanistically differentiated from conventional recombinant TCEs, with potential to reshape autoimmune treatment. In vivo TCEs maintain steadier drug levels, avoiding sharp concentration peaks that drive cytokine release.
Merck has licensed SPR2015, a KRAS G12D(ON) inhibitor developed by Sipurei, paying $400 million upfront in a deal worth up to $2.13 billion; the transaction has closed. SPR2015 showed nanomolar-level, highly selective inhibitory activity and antitumor effects as a monotherapy in multiple CDX/PDX models, with preclinical data presented at the 2026 AACR meeting. An IND application for SPR2015 has now been filed.
Varda Space Industries, founded in 2021 in El Segundo and led by CEO Will Bruey, closed a $251 million Series D round on 30 September 2026, lifting total funding to $598 million, with Lux Capital and Natural Capital leading and Founders Fund among the investors. The company operates as an orbital microgravity CDMO/CRO rather than a launch provider, and has completed six Falcon 9 rideshare missions, the first crystallizing the antiviral drug Ritonavir in orbit before landing at the Utah test range. Two more orbital modules, W-8 and W-9, are set to fly on Falcon 9's Transporter-18 rideshare in early October.
An oral weight-loss drug developed in China has been licensed to an overseas partner in a deal worth up to $2.6 billion in total. The agreement includes $300 million upfront plus payments tied to development, regulatory and commercial milestones, and the licensor is also eligible for sales royalties. The parties and drug name were not disclosed in the material.
Sanofi has licensed four early-stage long-acting antibodies from Regeneron, all targeting the type 2 inflammation pathway, for a $1 billion upfront payment. All four assets were developed in-house by Regeneron. The deal is framed as new CEO Belén Garijo's first major bet for the post-Dupixent era; Sanofi's European shares rose about 2% on the news.
Abogen Biosciences has granted Novartis an RNA therapy license with option rights covering its mRNA-TCE pipeline. Abogen receives $575 million upfront, and the deal could reach $7.775 billion if all options are exercised and milestones are met. Announced on October 2, it ranks among the largest outbound mRNA platform licensing deals by a Chinese biotech to date.
On September 28, Sipurui and Merck (MSD) announced a global exclusive license for SPR2015, an investigational oral KRAS G12D (ON) inhibitor. Merck gains worldwide development, manufacturing and commercialization rights, while Sipurui receives a $400 million upfront payment and is eligible for development and commercialization milestone payments, with the potential total deal value reaching $2.13 billion. The $400 million upfront is a record for a Chinese preclinical-stage business development deal on an asset that has no human data yet.
Novartis will pay Abogen Biosciences $575 million up front in a deal worth as much as $7.8 billion, gaining access to the Chinese biotech's mRNA-encoded drugmaking technology and an option to license ABO2203, a T cell engager targeting CD3 and CD19 being studied in relapsed or refractory B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Abogen is eligible for up to $7.2 billion in milestone payments, and Novartis could license additional programs. The deal follows a series of Novartis trial failures in September, including three deaths in a paused autoimmune CAR-T trial.
Why it matters: Large-pharma licensing of Chinese RNA-encoded T cell engager technology at near-record deal value signals a pipeline rebuild after trial failures.
Novartis has agreed to a $7.8 billion deal with Abogen centred on ABO2203, the biotech's autoimmune bispecific T-cell engager. Unlike other therapies in this class, ABO2203 uses an mRNA-encoded system to produce the T-cell engager protein in vivo. The deal signals Novartis' move into autoimmune applications of the BiTE approach.
Sanofi and Regeneron have expanded their alliance to co-develop and co-commercialize four long-acting, Regeneron-invented antibodies targeting IL-13, IL-4 or an IL-4 subunit, like Dupixent. The most advanced, REGN20423, is in an early-stage eczema trial; the other three should enter human testing next year. Regeneron receives $1 billion up front and as much as $7 billion in milestone payments, and can opt to add Sanofi's lunsekimig after certain late-stage studies. Dupixent, first cleared in 2017, brought in $10.9 billion in net sales in the first half of this year.
