Lilly Buys Centessa, Takeda & Alumis Tyk2 Showdown, & Blackstone’s Megafund

Medicines that are breaking new ground in sleep medicine, immune-mediated kidney diseases, and plaque psoriasis made headlines this week.

Ten years from now, it’s possible millions of people will be living healthier, more vibrant lives because of these groundbreaking medicines.

The science continues to yield dazzling results. But you have to wonder how long this sector can flourish in a political environment this hostile.

On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order, known as the Section 232 Pharmaceutical Proclamation, imposing 100 percent tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients on companies that don’t already have a deal exempting them from the tariffs.

Pfizer, Merck or Johnson & Johnson, may see this as a minor concern. They already negotiated deals to protect their near-term bottom lines from the tariff threats. But if care about the long-term and the entire US biomedical R&D enterprise that creates most of the new medicines, then they should do what they can to stop it.

This policy of carving out protection deals for 16 companies might make a little more sense if you think there are only 16 companies in the biopharma industry that matter.

BIO CEO John Crowley issued a statement on how bad this is for the biotech industry – especially the small and mid-sized companies that create most of the innovative new medicines.

“While we appreciate the Administration’s recognition of the need for tariff exemptions for certain critical biotech products, the reality is that any tariffs on America’s medicines will raise costs, impede domestic manufacturing, and delay the development of new treatments – all while doing nothing to enhance our national security,” Crowley said.

Catch up on those fundamental advances in biotech that came to fruition this week in Frontpoints.

Deals

Eli Lilly agreed to pay $6.3 billion upfront, and $7.8 billion if all milestones are met, to acquire Boston and London-based Centessa Pharmaceuticals. The acquisition gives Lilly a pipeline of drug candidates based on orexin biology – a hot, emerging area for the treatment of narcolepsy, but also for addiction, neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases. For more on Lilly’s most recent 20 acquisitions and the opportunity for more, see this Mar 2026 TR article, and for a quick read on the competition between Takeda, Alkermes, and now Lilly/Centessa, see this TR piece from this week. The big winners in the Centessa deal were Medicxi, which founded and led the company’s $250 million Series A in 2021. Other investors were: General Atlantic, Vida Ventures, Janus Henderson Investors, Boxer Capital, BVF Partners, Cormorant Asset Management, EcoR1 Capital, Franklin Templeton, Logos Capital, T. Rowe Price Associates, Venrock Healthcare Partners, and Wellington Management.

The other big acquisition of the week was Biogen’s purchase of Waltham, Mass.-based Apellis Pharmaceuticals for $5.6 billion upfront, or $41 a share, plus another $4 a share in contingent value rights if Syfovre hits certain sales targets. Biogen expects the deal to start adding to its profits in 2027. The deal gives Biogen the rights to Apellis’s C3 complement inhibitor for geographic atrophy pegcetacoplan (Syfovre) and another marketed version of pegcetacoplan (Empaveli) for a couple of C3-mediated rate kidney diseases. Biogen emphasized that it plans to keep the Apellis commercial team, with its expertise and relationships in the kidney disease category. This builds on the company’s prior acquisition of HiBio in 2024, in which it got felzartamab for immune-mediated kidney diseases.

Japan-based Otsuka Pharmaceuticals agreed to acquire New York-based Transcend Therapeutics for $700 million upfront and up to another $525 million in milestone payments. Otsuka will obtain Transcend’s programs for neuropsychiatric diseases, including TSND-201 (methylone), which the company is developing for post-traumatic stress disorder. Transcend reported it hit the primary endpoint of a Phase II study in that indication in May 2025.

Cambridge, Mass.-based Insilico Medicine pocketed $115 million upfront, and could collect up to $2.75 billion in milestones, through a global R&D collaboration with Eli Lilly. The big drugmaker will get access to Insilico’s AI platform for drug discovery “across multiple therapeutic areas.”

Alameda, Calif.-based Infinimmune agreed to a collaboration with Merck to discover antibodies against multiple targets selected by Merck. Terms weren’t disclosed.

Data That Mattered

South San Francisco-based Alumis released late-breaking results on a pair of Phase III clinical trials of its oral small molecule Tyk2 inhibitor, envudeucitinib, for moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. The Onward1 and Onward2 clinical trials showed that 59 percent, and 53 percent, of patients, respectively, were able to get clear or near-clear skin after 16 weeks of treatment. That’s according to the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) 90 score. Results improved with time. About two-thirds of patients – 68 percent and 62 percent in the two trials – got all the way to PASI 90 scores after 24 weeks. At the 24-week mark, PASI 100 scores – clear skin – were recorded for 41 percent and 39.5 percent of patients in those two trials. The most common side effects were headache, stuffy nose, upper respiratory tract infection, and acne. No new safety signals were observed. Data were presented at the American Academy of Dermatology.

These data struck me as unequivocally positive. In something of a head-scratcher, shares declined after this data release, then mostly recovered by Thursday. The drug “showed impressive results across all time-points on every meaningful measure of effect,” Baird analyst Brian Skorney wrote to clients. Given the size of the psoriasis market, the chance for oral small molecules to expand it further, and Alumis relatively low valuation of about $3 billion, it wouldn’t be surprising to see a large pharma swoop in and acquire Alumis sometime soon.

Takeda reported similar – very competitive – results from a pair of Phase III studies for zasocitinib, its oral small molecule Tyk2 inhibitor for moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. The studies, Latitude PsO 3001 and 3002, showed that 61 percent and 52 percent of patients, respectively, got all the way to PASI 90 scores after 16 weeks. The Takeda drug showed that between one-third and one-fourth of patients – 33 percent and 25 percent – got all the way to clear skin with PASI 100 scores after 16 weeks. About two-thirds of patients on the Takeda drug got to PASI 90 after 24 weeks, and 42 percent got all the way to PASI 100 after 24 weeks. The safety and efficacy numbers look awfully similar to ones reported by Alumis. Takeda said it’s on track to file an application for FDA approval and applications with other regulatory authorities during fiscal year 2026. This drug, as a reminder, was acquired from Nimbus Therapeutics for $4 billion upfront, plus $2 billion in milestones.

Biogen reported on its second Phase II study with litifilimab, an antibody directed at blood dendritic cell antigen 2 (BDCA2) for cutaneous lupus erythematosus. Researchers on the Amethyst study found that 14.7 percent of patients on the targeted Biogen drug achieved clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks compared with 2.9 percent in the placebo group. Results were presented at the American Academy of Dermatology meeting.

Bristol Myers Squibb, seeking to fend off a competitive challenge from Cytokinetics, released Phase III results that evaluated mavacamten (Camzyos) for adolescents ages 12-18 with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. There are no currently approved therapies for this younger population.

Amgen reported that its PCSK9-directed antibody can reduce the risk of a first major cardiovascular event – heart attack, stroke or death – by 31 percent when given as a preventive medicine for people at high risk. The move to lower LDL cholesterol even lower than was ever possible with statins is now sure to gain momentum. For Amgen, it will allow it to continue to press its advantage in its head-to-head competition between its injectable antibody evolocumab (Repatha) and Regeneron’s alirocumab (Praluent). But the advantage will likely be short-term. The field will soon have another strong entrant with Merck’s first-in-class oral PCSK9 inhibitor, enlicitide decanoate. That drug was given a National Priority Review voucher from the FDA commissioner’s office, which could speed up its regulatory review by several months and expand the market for heart disease prevention.

Boston-based Pepgen lost more than half its value after reporting results from an 8-patient clinical trial of its oligonucleotide for myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1). Average splicing correction in the drug group (N=6) was 7.3 percent, while two other patients in the placebo group had 6.8 percent splice correction.

Boulder, Colo.-based Enveda reported that its oral small molecule, first-in-class treatment for atopic dermatitis, ENV-294, delivered encouraging results in a Phase 1b study of nine patients. Researchers reported a 68 percent reduction in Eczema Area and Severity Index (EASI) scores by Day 28, which increased to 85 percent by Day 42, 14 days after patients stopped taking the drug. No serious adverse events were reported and no patients stopped taking the drug earlier than anticipated. The drug candidate emerged from Enveda’s natural product-inspired, and chemistry-based approach to drug discovery.

“The atopic dermatitis treatment landscape has advanced with biologics and JAK inhibitors, but no oral therapy today delivers JAK-inhibitor-like efficacy without boxed warnings and laboratory monitoring,” said Jonathan Silverberg, Professor of Dermatology at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in a company statement. “The ENV-294 data, while early, are compelling, with rapid, deep responses by Day 28 that continue to improve after treatment cessation. The biomarker profile also indicates broad activity across Th2, Th17, and Th1 pathways, which is particularly relevant in many atopic dermatitis patients.”

For more background on the company’s unusual approach to drug discovery, listen to my most recent episode of The Long Run podcast with CEO Viswa Colluru.

Financings

New York and Cambridge, Mass.-based Blackstone Life Sciences said it closed on Fund VI with $6.3 billion. It’s the largest private equity fund ever raised in life sciences and 40 percent larger than Blackstone’s prior fund, the firm said. Nick Galakatos, the global head of Blackstone Life Sciences, attributed the fundraising haul to the firm’s partnership model in which it shares the risks and rewards with drug developers seeking to go the last mile to win FDA approvals and help commercialize new medicines. Blackstone’s team has worked on an impressive 34 regulatory approvals of medicines and devices since the firm got started in 2018. The firm says it has an 86 percent success rate in betting on Phase III assets that get approved – better than the industry average.

Seattle-based Immusoft said its operation in San Francisco scooped up a $15 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to advance its engineered B-cell therapy for mucopolysaccharidosis type I (MPS-1), a rare lysosomal storage disease.

Waltham, Mass.-based Kailera Therapeutics filed an S-1 prospectus to go public. The obesity drug developer is backed by Bain Capital Life Sciences, Atlas Venture, RTW Investments, Canada Pension Plan and others. It works in close partnership with China-based Jiangsu Hengrui. This will be one of the bellwether IPOs of 2026, as the obesity drug market grows into the biggest and most competitive category in biopharmaceutical industry history. For more on Kailera, listen to The Long Run podcast with CEO Ron Renaud from January 2026. The S-1 is a solid document to read to under the GLP-1 space, including Kailera’s views on page 143 about how it thinks it has a more tolerable oral drug candidate (ribupatide) primed to compete with Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill and the newly FDA approved oral pill orforglipron (Foundayo) from Eli Lilly.

Terrestrial Bio, a Woburn, Mass.-based developer of patch technology originally developed to deliver vaccines without needles, switched gears to use that technology to deliver GLP-1 receptor agonist peptides without needles. The company’s old name was Vaxess, to signify increasing vaccine access. By switching to the more favorable market, Terrestrial secured $50 million in a Series C financing led by RA Capital with participation from Engine Ventures, GHIC, and SiteGround.  

Boulder, Colo.-based Ambrosia Biosciences raised $100 million in a Series B financing. New investors Blue Owl Healthcare Opportunities, Redmile and Deep Track Capital co-led. Existing investors BVF Partners and Boulder Ventures also participated, and were joined by additional new investors Janus Henderson Investors, Samsara BioCapital, and an undisclosed institutional investor. The company is led by small molecule chemistry veterans of Array Biopharma. They are working on oral small molecules aimed at GLP-1 for obesity.

Regulatory Action

The FDA gave Eli Lilly the green light to start selling orforglipron (Foundayo). It’s an orally available small molecule pill designed to agonize the GLP-1 receptor for obesity. Unlike Novo’s recently approved Wegovy pill, the Lilly drug can be taken on an empty stomach. Novo’s clinical trials suggest a bit higher weight loss (about 16 percent of body weight compared with 12 percent for the Lilly pill). Lilly said it plans to make the drug widely available through its LillyDirect platform, allowing people to pay out of pocket as well as obtain the drug through their health insurer.

Boston-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals said it won an expansion to the FDA approved prescribing label for Alyftrek and Trikafta, which effectively makes 800 more patients eligible for the cystic fibrosis medicines. About 95 percent of all CF patients are now eligible, the company said.  

Personnel File

New York-based Petrichor, a healthcare and life sciences growth equity firm, hired Paul Sekhri as an operating partner.

Boston-based Alloy Therapeutics hired Alexander Titus to lead its newly formed Vigilance Division. Vigilance plans to use AI to enhance supply chain resilience, advance biosecurity preparedness, and speed up the development of therapeutics for emerging biological threats.