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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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iStock, beast01 In the midst of regulatory and political upheaval, biopharma’s R&D engine kept running, churning out highs and lows in equal parts. Here are some of this year’s most glorious clinical trial victories. 2025 continued a difficult stretch for biopharma, as funding continued to crawl for much of the year before showing signs of life in the fourth quarter—and several companies experienced regulatory whiplash as the FDA seemingly reversed positions it had only recently communicated. Add to this an FDA that is hemorrhaging institutional knowledge and a health secretary consistently communicating scientifically questionable positions and it’s been a rollercoaster of a year. Still, the industry perseveres. Drugmakers continued to advance their investigational products, braving the turbulent drug development waters in the hopes of bringing an innovative therapy to the market. And while this effort often ends in failure — 90% of investigational drugs flunk out in clinical trials—several companies, including uniQure, Roche and Novo Nordisk clinched key clinical victories in challenging and lucrative indications. In this piece, BioSpace looks back at some of the biggest trial successes this year, reviewing not only the data but also their broader impact on the company and industry as a whole. UniQure Scores Historic Huntington’s Win, Despite FDA Pushback On Sept. 24, uniQure announced that its gene therapy slowed the progression of Huntington’s disease by 75% at the three-year mark. Aside from disease progression, AMT-130 also hit key secondary endpoints, improving functional capacity and lowering the concentrations of a key disease biomarker versus outside comparators. The data exceeded analyst expectations and could pave the way for the first genetic treatment for the devastating neurodegenerative disorder—barring any regulatory roadblocks. But that’s exactly what uniQure ran into in just five weeks later. Last month, despite having aligned with the FDA on the protocols and analytical models used in the pivotal study, uniQure revealed that the regulator “no longer agrees” that Phase I/II data for AMT-130 is “adequate to provide the primary evidence in support of a [biologics license application] submission.” UniQure had been planning to BLA early in 2026, but following the FDA’s seeming reversal, the timeline for submission is now “unclear,” the biotech said in November . In a Nov. 3 note, Stifel analysts called the FDA’s about-face “a shock,” adding that the decision could have far-reaching stock implications not just for uniQure but also for “other development stage companies in the gene therapy space.” Elsewhere in the Huntington’s space, PTC therapeutics reported positive Huntington’s data in May from a Phase II study of its small-molecule drug PTC518, though analyst reaction has been mixed. While the drug elicited a 23% reduction in the huntingtin protein, William Blair in a May 5 note said that a link between the biomarker and functional remains to be proven. The analysts also flagged the lack of functional benefit in patients with later-stage disease. Metsera’s Weight-Loss Win-Streak Sparks Big Pharma Tug-of-War Rising obesity star Metsera captured the industry’s attention in September last year when it announced that its GLP-1 injectable MET-097i achieved 7.5% weight-loss at 36 days in an early study. This year, the New York biotech proved that its success wasn’t a fluke—and secured a nearly $10 billion buyout for its efforts. Metsera kicked off 2025 with more data for MET-097i, this time from a Phase IIa trial involving 120 patients with overweight or obesity, but without type 2 diabetes. After 12 weekly doses, patients on the GLP-1 injection dropped 11.3% of their body weight versus placebo. Some patients lost as much as 20% of their weight, the biotech said at the time, adding that it did not observe any plateauing effect. Metsera followed this up with another mid-stage data drop in late September, touting a 14.1% placebo-adjusted weight reduction with MET-097i at 28 weeks—findings that Leerink Partners in a Sept. 30 note called “very encouraging.” Eli Lilly’s blockbuster medicine, tirzepatide,“achieved about a 13% placebo-adjusted weight-loss” at a similar length of follow-up, the analysts noted. Late-stage development for MET-097i is slated for late-stage development within the year. Beyond MET-097i, Metsera’s ultra-long-acting amylin injectable MET-233i induced 8.4% weight-loss versus placebo at 36 days in a Phase I study that read out in June. Some patients on MET-233i saw a 10.2% reduction in body weight. These results were enough to ignite one of the most high-pro not messiest—biopharma bidding war —in recent history. Pfizer in mid-September announced that it would acquire the biotech for $4.9 billion , setting the pharma up for an obesity comeback after suffering several failed assets. A month later, however, Novo Nordisk submitted a rival bid worth $8.5 billion . This intrusion—which Metsera seemed to welcome, calling the offer “ superior ” to Pfizer’s—set off a very public back-and-forth between the companies, involving lawsuits from the New York pharma. Ultimately, Pfizer prevailed, upping its offer to $9.2 billion to definitively win Metsera’s hand in corporate marriage. Novo Bounces Back With Phase II Amycretin Win Despite losing out on Metsera , Novo Nordisk nevertheless notched a crucial victory last month as its oral amylin candidate amycretin demonstrated a “competitive” pro a mid-stage diabetes study. In a Phase II trial of nearly 450 patients with type 2 diabetes, Novo’s amylin pill led to 7.6% weight loss at 36 weeks as compared with placebo. The subcutaneous injection, meanwhile, cut 11.9% off patients’ body weight. BMO Capital Markets called this efficacy profile “competitive,” noting amycretin’s “potentially differentiated profile” in the increasingly crowded space of oral obesity treatments. “Importantly, no weight loss plateau was observed in either administration route, suggesting the potential for additional weight loss at longer time points,” BMO added. Amycretin also elicited a 1.5% decrease in blood glucose levels, as represented by HbA1c at the same time point. A subcutaneous formulation of the drug, meanwhile, elicited a 1.8% HbA1c drop. Amycretin’s Phase II win helps deliver some vindication for Novo’s obesity franchise, which in recent months has been struggling both clinically and commercially. Its blockbuster drug Wegovy, for instance, has been ceding market share to Lilly’s Zepbound, despite breeching the market first. Novo has blamed compounders for Wegovy’s shaky commercial footing, but analysts are skeptical. During the company’s first quarter earnings call in May, Peter Verdult of BNP Paribas floated a difficult theory: “Is it really only about the compounders or do we have to consider your nearest branded competitor doing a better job?” The Danish pharma has also been struggling clinically. In December last year, its next-generation weight-loss therapy CagriSema delivered disappointing outcomes . The asset, which combines semaglutide with amylin analog cagrilintide, met its primary endpoint in the Phase III REDEFINE 1 study, but its 22.7% weight-reduction fell short of investor expectations —which Novo itself set—erasing some $72 billion off the company’s market cap. Meanwhile, a day before the amycretin readout last month, Novo reported that semaglutide was unable to significantly slow Alzheimer’s disease progression in the Phase III EVOKE and EVOKE+ studies. While expectations for this program had not been high, the data drop still knocked some 10% off Novo’s shares in its aftermath. BMS/BioNTech Eye PD-1/VEGF Leadership With Geographically Consistent Data One of the most closely watched—not to mention most clinically promising—trends in cancer today is the rise of PD-1/VEGF inhibition. Achieved through the use of bispecific antibodies that bind and block both receptors, the PD-1/VEGF approach rose to prominence in September last year, when Summit Therapeutics and its Chinese partner Akeso claimed victory over Merck’s mega-blockbuster Keytruda. In a late-stage non-small cell lung cancer trial, the partners’ ivonescimab achieved nearly 50% better progression-free survival than the cornerstone cancer therapy. BioNTech jumped into the space a few months later, acquiring Biotheus for up to $950 million and gaining access to its PD-1/VEGF bispecific BNT327. This investment has paid off nicely for BioNTech. In September, the company reported data from a global Phase II trial showing that BNT327, which has since been named pumitamig, given alongside standard chemotherapy, elicited a 76.3% overall response rate (ORR) in patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer. Disease control rate hit 100%. In a Sept. 8 note, analysts at Truist Securities said that these data were “very reassuring” since they “confirmed the treatment effect seen in China.” Analysts were referring to a Phase II readout from pumitamig in March, which demonstrated a confirmed ORR of 85.4% in Chinese patients . Disease control rate in this trial was 97.9%. Encouraged by these data, BioNTech has taken pumitamig into late-stage development in the same indication, for which it is running the Phase III ROSETTA-LUNG-01 trial . To establish the antibody’s efficacy across different patient populations, the study is enrolling across different geographies, including the U.S., China, Australia and Korea. ROSETTA-LUNG-01 is set to complete in March 2029. Aside from performing well in the clinic, pumitamig has also helped BioNTech garner hefty support from the industry’s heavy hitters. In June, Bristol Myers Squibb put more than $11 billion on the line—including $3.5 billion upfront and up to $7.6 billion in milestones—for the right to co-develop and co-commercialize the asset. Roche Makes Alzheimer’s Comeback With Mid-Stage Win Neuroscience has classically been a challenging space for biopharma, and 2025 was no different. With many companies posting clinical failures in this space—Roche secured a key victory this year in one of the most intractable indications: Alzheimer’s disease. At the 2025 Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease (CTAD) meeting earlier this month, the pharma presented data from its ongoing Phase I/II Brainshuttle AD study demonstrating that 92% of patients treated with its next-gen anti-amyloid antibody trontinemab achieved amyloid levels lower than 24-centiloid, a key threshold determining the presence of amyloid plaques on a PET scan. Trontinemab also showed a potential benefit on the tau accumulation in the brain. As for safety, amyloid-related imaging abnormalities suggestive of brain swelling or bleeding occurred in fewer than 5% of treated patients. These findings echo an earlier data drop during the 2025 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) in July. In a presentation at the meeting, Roche reported that 91% of trontinemab-treated patients tested negative on a PET scan for amyloid in the brain, while 72% achieved “deep clearance” of amyloid clumps. Trontinemab represents an Alzheimer’s comeback for Roche. In late 2022, Roche’s gantenerumab, likewise an anti-amyloid antibody failed two Phase III studies, forcing the pharma to pull the plug on the program. Meanwhile, at-home administration of anti-amyloid drug Leqembi is becoming a reality, companies like Eisai continue to advance candidates against tau, and 30-plus trials are underway against what Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation Co-founder and Chief Science Officer Howard Fillit recently told BioSpace earlier this month is the industry’s hottest target: inflammation. “Forty years of research is finally paying off,” he said. Alzheimer’s disease Eisai Still Confident in Anti-Tau Asset as J&J Becomes Latest Victim in Spiraling Space Days after Johnson & Johnson’s posdinemab failed to slow clinical decline in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, Eisai Chief Clinical Officer Lynn Kramer expressed unwavering conviction in his company’s own anti-tau asset, while others suggest the Alzheimer’s field is heading in a completely different direction. December 5, 2025 · 4 min read · Heather McKenzie