A retrospective analysis published in Nature suggests that people treated for certain cancers, including melanoma and lung cancer, lived significantly longer if they had received an mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine before or shortly after starting immunotherapy. The findings hint that mRNA vaccines - initially designed to prevent infection - might also amplify anti-cancer immune responses.
Eli Lilly and Company is acquire Adverum Biotechnologies Inc, giving it a Phase 3 gene therapy for a common eye disorder and expanding its portfolio of genetic medicines. The acquisition, priced at approximately $262 million, comes just five months after Lilly made a much bigger outlay for Verve Therapeutics Inc, a Boston, US based company, which has an in vivo gene editing product for cardiovascular disease. This acquisition was valued at $1 billion upfront.
Omnix Medical Ltd, based in Israel, has raised $25 million from a Series C funding round to accelerate development of a pipeline of antimicrobials directed against multidrug-resistant infections. Announced on 15 October, the financing was co-led by Harel Insurance & Finance Group, one of Israel’s largest financial institutions, and the European Innovation Council Fund, a venture initiative of the European Commission under the Horizon Europe research programme.
Tubulis GmbH, a German company with a portfolio of antibody-drug conjugates, has raised €308 million in a Series C financing round in what is being described as the largest C round for a European biotechnology company and the biggest financing globally for a private ADC developer. Announced on 15 October, the round was led by Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners with participation from additional new investors Wellington Management and Ascenta Capital.
Bristol Myers Squibb Co has stepped up its commitment to cell therapies with plans to spend $1.5 billion to acquire a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech which is developing a medicine to reprogramme the immune system and treat autoimmune diseases. Orbital’s lead product, OTX-201, is an in vivo chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy that is being developed using ribonucleic acid (RNA) technology. The preclinical product consists of a circular RNA that encodes a CAR which targets cells expressing CD19, a B cell specific antigen.
AstraZeneca Plc has become the second global pharmaceutical company to sign an agreement with the Trump Administration to lower the prices of its medicines sold in the US. In parallel it will increase its manufacturing presence in the country and upgrade its share listing. Pfizer Inc signed a similar agreement with the government on 30 September. The deals are applications of the World Trade Organization’s most-favoured nation principle (MFN) under which favourable terms of trade, like lower tariffs, extended to one country are granted to other WHO members as well.
Genmab A/S is to take over the Dutch company Merus NV for $8 billion in one of the largest European biotech transactions to date, giving it new tools for treating a host of cancers. Merus has a portfolio of bispecific and trispecific antibodies which are recombinant molecules that bind to one or more targets at the same time. The company has one marketed product, Bizengri (zenocutuzumab), which has been approved for non-small cell lung and pancreatic cancers, and a second, petosemtamab, which is in development for head and neck and colorectal cancers.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University, Richard Robson of the University of Melbourne, and Omar M. Yaghi of the University of California, Berkeley, for the development of metal-organic frameworks. Their pioneering work has led to the creation of molecular materials with vast internal spaces that can capture, store and transform a range of substances - from water vapour to carbon dioxide and toxic gases.
The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded jointly to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance, a breakthrough that has transformed understanding of how the immune system avoids attacking the body’s own tissues.
Their pioneering research uncovered the identity and genetic control of regulatory T cells, the so-called “security guards” of the immune system that prevent autoimmune attack.
Restructuring across the biotech industry has resulted in decisions by three companies to end programmes in cell therapy after investing heavily in the sector for several years. On 30 September, Heartseed Inc of Japan announced that partner Novo Nordisk A/S, was ending a collaboration to create a stem cell-based therapy for heart failure. In separate announcements on 1 October, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd of Japan and Galapagos NV of the Netherlands announced plans to discontinue or divest cell therapy progammes in cancer.