Efruxifermin

iStock, RomoloTavani These deals radically reshaped the biopharma world, either by one vaccine rival absorbing another, a Big Pharma doubling down after another failed acquisition or, in the case of Pfizer and Novo, two heavyweights duking it out over a hot obesity biotech. 2025 proved to be a high-drama year for dealmaking as pharmas fought over companies, swallowed their rivals and found inspiration in other companies’ transactions. The biggest deal of the year—Johnson & Johnson’s $14.6 billion buy of Intra-Cellular all the way back in January—didn’t even make the list of what BioSpace editors consider the most influential M&A deals of the year. While the year won’t go down as the biggest in value by any means, some of these deals will have an indelible impact on the industry for years to come. Pharmas dealt in obesity, cancer, cell therapy, mental health and a slate of others, growing and expanding their businesses. These deals, such as Pfizer’s fight to get an up-and-coming obesity biotech, AbbVie doubling down on psychedelics for mental health conditions and the fall of gene therapy’s darling shook and reshaped the biopharma sector in 2025, setting up excitement for the year ahead. Read on for 2025’s seven most impactful biopharma M&A deals. 1. The Pfizer/Novo/Metsera Saga, Obviously There could only be one story in the top spot, and it was the epic bidding war between Pfizer and Novo Nordisk over obesity startup Metsera. To make a long story short: Pfizer tried and repeatedly failed to develop a competitive obesity pipeline in-house. After several flunks earlier in 2025, the company looked to its business development team. Pfizer made a $4.9 billion offer for Metsera in September, to gain access to a long-acting GLP-1 and a long-acting amylin analogue. The deal seemed to be on the way to closing, until Novo offered an unsolicited $8.5 billion bid for the company a month later. Facing a different set of problems as the obesity space’s early leader, Novo was looking to rebuild its pipeline as rival Eli Lilly seemingly scored one win after another. A series of counteroffers, legal threats and FTC scrutiny followed, with Pfizer finally winning out for a price of about $9.2 billion for Metsera. With the dust now settled, Pfizer is back in the obesity business. The size of the obesity market, according to a Reports and Data analysis, is set to hit $27 billion yearly by as soon as 2028 and $150 billion by the early 2030s. The fight over Metsera seemed to indicate that Big Pharmas are still willing to go big in the obesity market. On the other hand, analysts wondered: Was it worth it? Obesity Is Metsera Worth the Fuss? Pfizer and Novo Nordisk seem to want Metsera bad. Analysts are wondering, though: Is the obesity biotech really worth this much effort? November 5, 2025 · 4 min read · Annalee Armstrong 2. BMS Spends $1.5B for Orbital as Others Retreat From Cell Therapy Over the course of 2025, there was a massive pullback from cell therapy, with Takeda and Novo Nordisk abandoning billions in long-term investments. But Bristol Myers Squibb doubled down. The Big Pharma plunked down $1.5 billion to get Orbital Therapeutics, snagging OTX-201, a circular RNA therapy that induces a patient’s own cells to make anti-CD19 CAR type constructs. The therapy is being tested to treat B cell–driven autoimmune disorders. The Orbital deal deepens BMS’ roots in cell therapy, adding to its approved anti-BCMA therpay Abecma , for relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, and the CD19-directed Breyanzi for blood cancers. But the buy also told the industry that there is still potential in cell therapy if you know where to look. 3. Novo Deepens MASH Stature With $5.2B Akero Buy Metabolic dysfunction–associated steatohepatitis—MASH—is suddenly one of the buzziest sectors in the pharma industry again. Novo Nordisk paid $5.2 billion to get Akero Therapeutics in October, adding efruxifermin, which reduced liver fibrosis by 24% in a Phase IIb study that read out earlier this year . It was such a good result that it pushed Roche to go hunting for an anti-MASH molecule, spurring that company’s purchase of 89bio for $3.5 billion in September. The Akero buy only deepened Novo Nordisk’s presence in the MASH space, as its multi-blockbuster GLP-1 Wegovy received approval for the liver condition in August . The Roche and Novo deals marked a turning point for the MASH space, which Big Pharma had largely abandoned years ago after numerous failures. The small biopharma Madrigal Pharmaceuticals finally broke through with the 2024 approval of Rezdiffra in MASH, reigniting interest in the space. Psychedelics Psychedelics Space Enters New Era as AbbVie Dives In With AbbVie’s $1.2 billion acquisition of Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals’ lead depression drug, the psychedelic therapeutics space has soundly rebounded from Lykos’ rejection last year. There are now seven programs in Phase III trials across the sector, with multiple companies vying for that first approval. September 22, 2025 · 6 min read · Heather McKenzie 4. AbbVie Goes Back to the Mental Health Well With Gilgamesh Buy AbbVie paid $1.2 billion to get just one asset from neurotech biotech Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals in August . That gave them an entree at a table that Big Pharma has nibble at for a while: psychedelics. AbbVie gained bretisilocin, a fast-acting analogue of dimethyltryptamine (DMT) for major depressive disorder (MDD). The rest of Gilgamesh’s pipeline spun out into a separate company, Gilgamesh Pharma Inc., which carries on an existing AbbVie partnership. The Gilgamesh buy suggested that AbbVie was undeterred after a $9 billion quagmire in the form of Cerevel . AbbVie paid the princely sum to get the company and its schizophrenia asset emraclidine in 2023, which went on to flunk Phase II trials one year later . The Gilgamesh deal helped galvanize interest in psychedelics. AbbVie’s investment came at a time when most neuropsych-focused pharmas “have kept a distance,” from psychedelics according to Aaron Bartlone, CEO of the Canadian mental health biotech Cybin. The only other Big Pharmas in the psychedelics space right now are Johnson & Johnson, with its ketamine derivative Spravato, and Japanese giant Otsuka. The latter paid $59 million in 2023 to absorb Mindset, a Canadian psychedelics biotech. 5. Bluebird—Ahem, Genetix—Goes Private Bluebird was the standard bearer of gene therapy, until it wasn’t. Private equity outfits The Carlyle Group and SK Capital bought the biotech, which at one time had been worth north of $10 billion, for a scant $50 million in February . It was a precipitous fall for bluebird, which had more than $1 billion in cash the first quarter of 2021. That number fell to just $118.7 million by the third quarter of 2023 . Gene therapy is facing a “ cold winter ,” as promising science has not translated to good business, with sky-high costs and infrastructure issues hobbling the sector. Still, Carlyle and SK have options for turning bluebird’s assets into profits—including just selling the three approved gene therapies off, as PitchBook Senior Biotech Analyst Kazi Helal suggested to BioSpace in July. Those assets are Lyfgenia for sickle cell disease, Skysona for cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy and Zynteglo for beta thalassemia. Bluebird’s sale was the biggest indicator of a growing trend: the entry of private equity into the biotechnology space. In the last few years, PE firms like BlackStone have launched life sciences–focused funds, put billions of dollars into backing new ventures and even funded individual professors’ research. Bluebird renamed itself to Genetix in September , shedding a unique biopharma name adopted in 2010 and returning to its original moniker. Deals Bluebird Go-Private Deal Signals the ‘PE-ization of Pharma’ Why did two private equity firms with more than $460 billion under management want a little old gene therapy biotech called bluebird bio? We wanted to know. July 2, 2025 · 7 min read · Annalee Armstrong 6. Once Hot Sage Fades Away in Supernus Buy In late November 2024, Sage’s lead asset dalzanemdor flunked a Phase II trial for Huntington’s disease, the third such fail for the drug. It was just the capstone of a series of setbacks for Sage over the last few years; another asset, SAGE-324, flunked a Phase II study for essential tremor and was discontinued, and its Biogen-partnered postpartum depression drug Zurzuvae failed to get FDA approval in major depressive disorder. Maryland-based Supernus stepped in and scooped up Sage for $795 million in June . It was a “good end” for the company, according to analysts, and represented a much larger buyout than one put forward by long-time partner Biogen in January. Biogen offered $469 million to fold in its partner in Zurzuvae in January 2025 . Sage declined the offer with extreme prejudice, going so far as to sue Biogen. Along with Zurzuvae, Supernus absorbed Sage’s other approved drugs: the ADHD medication Qelbree; Onapgo, a wearable device for treating motor fluctuations associated with Parkinson’s disease; and Gocovri, for treating dyskinesia in Parkinson’s. Stifel analysts, writing at the time of the Supernus buy, said that it “feels like an unremarkable outcome for a company that was once one of the hottest stories” in treating central nervous system disorders. 7. BioNTech Ends CureVac Rivalry With a Pot of Money In 2022, BioNTech said in a lawsuit that it faced “threats of a groundless patent infringement suit” from a company that was “unable to bring to market any product to help in the fight against COVID-19.” Three years later, BioNTech bought that company, CureVac, for $1.25 billion, ending a winding legal drama that was still ongoing at the time of the deal. That purchase gave BioNTech a new mRNA-based therapy for the tough brain cancer glioblastoma. Despite both companies gaining fame for working on vaccines, the deal was motivated mostly by interest in cancer. Getting access to CureVac’s pipeline of cancer immunotherapies “marks the next milestone in the execution of [BioNTech’s] oncology strategy,” the company said in announcing the deal. Despite regulatory headwinds prevailing against mRNA-based therapies and vaccines in the U.S.—like the federal government canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in research dollars aimed at projects using the technology—BioNTech’s bid to swallow up its rival is a signal that, even as the company diversifies into other modalities like bispecifics , mRNA-based therapies as a platform are here to stay. .responsive-container { display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; border: 1px solid #ededed; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Sans-Serif; padding: 20px 20px 10px 20px; } .column-left { flex: 1; max-width: 45%; padding: 20px 20px 10px 20px; } .column-right { flex: 2; padding: 20px 20px 10px 20px; } @media (max-width: 768px) { .column-left, .column-right { max-width: 100%; flex: 100%; padding: 10px 0; } } Subscribe to BioPharm Executive! 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Medical & Beauty 内容导读 随着健康问题的不断攀升，尤其是与代谢相关的疾病，减脂行业正在经历前所未有的转型。诺和诺德（Novo Nordisk）最近以52亿美元收购Akero Therapeutics，标志着该公司在代谢疾病领域的战略布局发生了重大变化。 此次收购的核心资产，Akero的FGF21类似物Efruxifermin（EFX），是目前在研发后期的潜力药物，专注于治疗代谢功能障碍相关脂肪性肝炎（MASH）。这一举措不仅为诺和诺德的管线注入了新的活力，还为减脂行业带来了新的方向与启示。 编辑 / 减脂行业前沿 内容组 01 诺和诺德的战略转型 诺和诺德以糖尿病治疗药物著称，特别是司美格鲁肽（Semaglutide）在减肥领域的成功，使其在全球市场占据了领先地位。然而，随着GLP-1受体激动剂市场的竞争愈发激烈，诺和诺德意识到，单一依赖糖尿病和肥胖症治疗领域并不足以维持其在生物制药行业的主导地位。 在这一背景下，诺和诺德的战略眼光瞄准了代谢性脂肪肝，特别是代谢功能障碍相关脂肪性肝炎（MASH）。MASH与肥胖症、2型糖尿病高度共病，且其发病率逐年上升，已经成为全球范围内的健康危机。 与糖尿病和肥胖症不同，MASH的治疗方案较为有限，市场上缺乏有效的药物治疗。通过收购Akero，诺和诺德不仅获取了潜力巨大的EFX，还迅速进入了这个尚未饱和的市场，开启了“后GLP-1时代”的新篇章。 02 FGF21类药物：减脂新纪元的潜力股 Efruxifermin（EFX）作为FGF21类药物，是诺和诺德此次收购的核心。FGF21（成纤维生长因子21）是一种重要的代谢调节因子，主要在肝脏、脂肪和肌肉中发挥作用。与传统的减脂药物不同，FGF21通过调节脂肪代谢、抗纤维化和改善肝脏功能的机制，直接针对与肥胖、糖尿病相关的代谢功能障碍。 EFX作为FGF21类似物，表现出了在临床试验中改善肝脏纤维化及脂肪代谢的显著效果。 EFX的出现为减脂行业提供了一个全新的治疗工具，它不仅可以改善体重，还能有效对抗代谢性脂肪肝等与肥胖和糖尿病相关的并发症。这一治疗方法的出现，意味着减脂不再仅仅局限于体重的减少，还涉及到对肝脏等重要器官的全面保护。 03 “GLP-1 + FGF21”：联合疗法的未来 诺和诺德的GLP-1受体激动剂与EFX在治疗代谢疾病方面具有互补作用。 GLP-1类药物，如司美格鲁肽，主要通过减少食欲和促进胰岛素分泌来帮助减重，改善糖尿病症状。而FGF21则专注于通过促进脂肪代谢、抗纤维化及改善肝脏功能来治疗与肥胖相关的代谢障碍。 未来，"GLP-1 + FGF21"的联合疗法有可能成为治疗代谢性疾病的黄金组合。两者的联合不仅能够全面改善患者的体重、血糖水平，还能有效改善肝脏的代谢功能，为代谢性疾病患者提供更加全面和个性化的治疗选择。 随着临床数据的积累，这一治疗方法可能会成为治疗MASH、糖尿病、肥胖等多种代谢疾病的标准疗法。 04 收购Akero：诺和诺德的长远布局 此次收购Akero的52亿美元交易，不仅仅是一次简单的收购，更是诺和诺德在代谢疾病领域布局的战略性举措。通过收购EFX，诺和诺德有效地切入了MASH这一尚处于研发阶段的治疗领域，迅速取得了该领域的领先地位。与此同时，诺和诺德还有效地构筑了在代谢性肝病治疗领域的技术壁垒。 在竞争日益激烈的市场环境中，诺和诺德通过高质量的外部并购，确保了其在代谢疾病领域的技术领先地位。 礼来、阿斯利康等竞争对手也纷纷加码代谢疾病领域的研发，但诺和诺德通过EFX的数据表现和联合疗法的潜力，进一步巩固了其在代谢领域的统治地位。 05 精准治疗与个性化医疗的结合 随着生物技术的迅速发展，减脂行业的治疗方式也在不断发生变化。从传统的饮食控制和运动减脂方法，到现在的药物疗法和基因编辑技术，减脂治疗的方向愈加精准和个性化。 诺和诺德的此次收购，正是减脂行业从传统方法向创新药物疗法转型的重要标志。 未来，减脂行业将更加注重精准治疗和个性化医疗的结合。通过对不同个体的代谢特征进行精准分析，医生将能够为患者制定个性化的治疗方案，最大限度地提高治疗效果。 同时，随着药物疗法的不断创新，减脂治疗将不再仅仅是一个简单的体重管理问题，而是一个综合的健康管理问题。 结语 总的来说，诺和诺德以52亿美元收购Akero Therapeutics，不仅是为了扩展管线，更是为了在代谢疾病领域占据关键位置。通过FGF21类药物EFX的研发和潜力，诺和诺德正在为减脂行业带来新的治疗选择。 而“GLP-1 + FGF21”联合疗法的未来前景，也为患者提供了更为全面的治疗方案。随着精准医疗的发展，减脂行业将在创新疗法的推动下，迎来更加多元化和个性化的治疗新时代 「发现全球医美最前沿」 2025年度【医与美前沿】年度大会 2025第七届全球医美前沿产业大会暨了不起的先行医美人魔力星尚大赏颁奖盛典 2026年1月8日·上海 欢迎各位医美行业同仁共聚上海，共话未来