Source - BiopharmaDive
The latest developments in oncology research

More than one quarter of the medcines cleared by the FDA’s main review office since 2015 have been cancer drugs.

Biotech M&A is picking back up. Here are the latest deals.

Dealmaking is essential to the business of drug development. Keep track of M&A as it happens with this database.

Updated Feb. 5, 2024 • By Ned Pagliarulo, Jacob Bell

In the business of drug development, deals can be just as important as scientific breakthroughs. Many of today’s most lucrative medicines, from the life-saving cancer treatment Keytruda to the anti-inflammatory agent Enbrel, might not have become so without mergers and acquisitions.

The end of the last decade brought record highs in pharmaceutical M&A as larger companies turned again and again to young biotechs for innovation. Often, these deals focused on cancer, rare diseases and immune system disorders — areas of drug research that were seeing major victories in clinical trials and huge profits for treatments that made it to market.

2021 and 2022 were much quieter for dealmaking, as new challenges and then rising interest rates weighed on negotiations. But there are signs of a rebound, with a flurry of dealmaking to close out 2023.