👋 Hey, let’s get into it. If you like to start your morning with a piping hot cup of biotech tea, we’ve got you. Today’s brew involves AstraZeneca, $10 billion, and an obesity drug.

Reuters reports that AstraZeneca offered about $10 billion for Rhythm Pharmaceuticals. Rhythm’s Imcivree treats certain rare forms of obesity, including one that can develop after damage to the hypothalamus. It targets a different appetite pathway than GLP-1 drugs and brought in $92.1 million last quarter.

If the deal goes through, AstraZeneca’s rare-disease arm, Alexion, would get an obesity drug that’s already on the market. The offer is reportedly non-binding. In big pharma, $10 billion still qualifies as “just browsing.”

😴 Lilly’s Foundayo Improves Sleep Apnea in Two Phase 3 Trials
Lilly’s weight-loss pill is making a case for a second job. In two 52-week trials involving 712 adults with overweight or obesity and moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnea, Foundayo led to roughly 12 to 13 fewer breathing interruptions per hour than placebo. The benefit showed up in patients using positive airway pressure therapy and in those going without it. Gastrointestinal side effects were more common with Foundayo. Lilly plans to file for the sleep apnea indication by year-end. At this point, we’re starting to wonder what this pill can’t do. Fold a fitted sheet, probably.

💰 argenx Agrees to a Peptide Deal Worth Up to $1.15 Billion
argenx agreed to pay $550 million in cash upfront for the rest of Unnatural Products, with up to $595 million more tied to development and regulatory milestones. The two have worked together for more than two years, so argenx already knows what it’s buying. Unnatural Products specializes in ring-shaped peptides, which give the antibody-focused drugmaker another way to go after immune targets. The appeal is a shot at medicines patients could take by mouth or dose less often. Each candidate will have to show it can offer those advantages while still reaching its target.

🚀 RevMed’s Rasonque Crushes Wall Street Estimates With Nearly $200M in Five Weeks
Remember the pancreatic cancer drug whose survival data got a standing ovation at ASCO earlier this year? That was Rasonque. Revolution Medicines just reported $197.6 million in sales in roughly five weeks on the market. Investors were looking for $80 million to $100 million. More than 5,000 U.S. patients received Rasonque commercially by the end of September. Initial stocking and patients switching over from early access helped boost sales. The next few quarters should give us a better read on demand. Never underestimate a standing ovation.

📈 Moderna Posts $1.3 Billion in Revenue and Returns to Quarterly Profit
Moderna’s experimental cancer vaccine has been getting the headlines, but its COVID shots are still paying the bills. Higher international COVID vaccine sales helped lift third-quarter revenue 29% to $1.3 billion. Moderna posted $162 million in net income, compared with a $200 million loss a year earlier, and raised its full-year revenue growth forecast from up to 10% to 15%–25%. Respiratory vaccine sales are seasonal, and lower R&D spending also helped the bottom line. For now, the commercial franchise is doing the heavy lifting while the cancer vaccine is still in development.

🧬 Let’s Talk Biotech in Philly

Some of the best conversations at a biotech conference start with “So, what are you working on?”

On April 6–7, Future Biotech Expo 2027 brings scientists, biotech executives, pharma teams, and investors to Philadelphia to talk about what’s next in drug discovery, therapeutics, and biopharma.

If you’re looking for a research partner or curious how other teams are tackling the same problems you are, two days in Philly might beat another month of “let’s find a time to chat.”

I’ll be there representing BioNucleus, and I’d love to meet some of the people on the other side of this newsletter. If you’re going, come find me and say hi!

🧲 Evommune Licenses a Molecular Glue With Up to $1.1 Billion in Milestones
Evommune will pay Hinova $30 million upfront for rights outside Greater China to an experimental oral VAV1 degrader for immune diseases.

🔎 FDA Investigates Cancer Risk Linked to Zolgensma
The FDA confirmed links to some tumors after the spinal muscular atrophy gene therapy and says its benefits still outweigh risks for approved use.

💰 Charles River Agrees to Buy Frontage Businesses for Up to $545 Million
Charles River will pay $470 million upfront if the deal closes, with up to $75 million more for the bioanalysis and drug metabolism operations.

🦠 Vir’s Hepatitis Delta Combo Meets Its Phase 3 Goal
The potential rival to Gilead’s Hepcludex met its Phase 3 goal, with 79% of treated patients reaching undetectable viral RNA at week 48.

💊 Lilly Brings Zepbound and Foundayo to Hims & Hers
The agreement will make both branded weight-loss drugs available at Lilly’s self-pay prices to eligible Hims & Hers patients who receive a prescription.

❤️ Novartis’ Pelacarsen Cut Lp(a) by 78% Without Reducing Cardiovascular Events
Full Phase 3 results showed that sharply lowering this inherited risk marker failed to reduce major cardiovascular events over a median 4.7 years.

👎 FDA Declines Novocure’s Brain Metastases Device Application
Novocure says the FDA questioned how much its Optune Mya device would help patients whose non-small cell lung cancer had spread to the brain.

🙌 J&J’s Icotyde Hits Its Phase 3 Psoriatic Arthritis Goal
The daily pill could challenge AbbVie’s Skyrizi. At week 16, 58% on Icotyde achieved ACR20, a standard measure of improvement, versus 41% on placebo.

Meet your new lab mate. It reads papers, plans experiments, and runs the sequencer. It also expects you to refill its reagents. That’s the division of labor at AutoDNA, an autonomous lab built by researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

In a study published in Nature, the team showed how AutoDNA goes from planning an experiment to running it. Its AI agents look up protocols, pick reagents, and write the code that tells the machines what to do. Then the system sends those commands to the equipment and runs the experiment. A shared software interface tells AutoDNA what each instrument can do, and a scheduler figures out which machines each experiment needs and when they’re free.

Across the demonstrations, AutoDNA coordinated more than 20 types of instruments. In one test, it encoded a digital file in DNA, synthesized and stored the DNA, then sequenced it and recovered the original file exactly. In a separate benchmark, it ran overlapping protocols 3.2 times as fast.

That could mean less time figuring out how to move an experiment from one machine to the next. It also gives lab tools companies something to think about. If two instruments do the same job, the one that can talk to the rest of the lab starts looking a lot more appealing.

AutoDNA was built around a specific set of instruments and experiments, and people still handle maintenance and restocking. The next test is how well it adapts when a lab swaps in a new instrument or changes a protocol midweek.

In the meantime, grad students can take some comfort in knowing that most lab robots probably cost more than their stipend…Assuming there is a stipend.

That’s how much Agios expects its R&D headcount to shrink by year-end compared with 2025, a reduction of over 100 roles. The rare disease drugmaker expects savings to kick in next year, even as its product sales continue to grow.

Here’s what biotech Redditors are talking about:

🪜 Would You Trade a $110,000 Academic Job for Big Pharma?
A Redditor asked whether a friend making $110,000 as an academic staff scientist should interview for a California pharma job advertising $130,000 to $170,000. Commenters weighed higher living costs and company politics against stock and bonuses. The prevailing view was that the friend is probably near their ceiling in academia, and pharma is their best bet for a better title and higher pay. If you’re going to climb the career ladder, it helps to check whether there’s another rung.

😐 Interviewed for Study Director. The Offer Said Study Coordinator
A San Diego biotech worker with 12 years of preclinical experience told r/biotech they spent weeks interviewing for a study director job at a CRO. The offer? Study coordinator at $75,000. Their last job paid $130,000. Reddit was split between walking away and taking the paycheck while continuing to job search. Either way, it’s a little insulting to spend weeks explaining why you’re qualified for a job and get offered a different one at barely half your old pay.

🧪 Study Links Two PFAS Chemicals to ER-Negative Breast Cancer
An observational NIH study linked higher blood levels of PFOA and PFOS to higher rates of estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer, with no clear association overall.

🦾 Generate Uses Claude to Help Shorten CAR-T Signaling Domains
Generate Biomedicines used Claude alongside its own protein design models to engineer a signaling component about 70% shorter that retained function in lab tests.

💈 Rogaine Sales Rise 30%, With GLP-1s a Possible Growth Driver
Rogaine sales rose 30% year to date, and Kimberly-Clark’s CEO suggested GLP-1 adoption might be helping, adding another unexpected name to the weight loss economy.

🤖 FDA Seeks Input on Autonomous Medical Robots
The FDA’s discussion paper seeks feedback by January 5, 2027, on how to evaluate medical robots with autonomous functions or remote controls.

💸 T-Therapeutics Raises $133 Million for TCR Bispecifics
Cambridge based T-Therapeutics raised $133 million in a Series B co-led by Advent Life Sciences and British Business Bank, with Lilly also investing. The money will help take two experimental treatments into human studies, one for cancer and one for autoimmune disease. The cancer program uses a T-cell receptor to recognize fragments of proteins from inside a cell that are displayed on its surface. A second binding arm brings a T cell over. That gives the startup a way to go after targets conventional antibodies struggle to reach.

🥚 November 10, 1977: One Egg Sets the First IVF Birth in Motion
On this day in 1977, surgeon Patrick Steptoe retrieved an egg from Lesley Brown. The team fertilized it in the lab, and two days later Steptoe transferred an eight-cell embryo. On July 25, 1978, Louise Brown became the first baby born through in vitro fertilization. Steptoe, scientist Robert Edwards, and nurse and laboratory collaborator Jean Purdy had spent years working toward that moment. It’s the kind of milestone that gets a single date in the history books and takes a whole team years to put there.

Thinking back to that autonomous lab story, I’m picturing a grad student in the lab of the future. The AI runs the experiments while they sprint from instrument to instrument refilling reagents and replacing pipette tips. Meanwhile, the PI opens the electric bill and starts wondering whether the robots could maybe work from home on Fridays.

That’s all for today. See you Thursday for the next issue.

✍️ Today’s email was brought to you by Josh Martin. Connect with me on LinkedIn.

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