👋 Hey, let’s get into it. When you think about biotech's hottest IPO of 2026, you'd probably guess obesity, AI drug discovery, or maybe oncology. Turns out the real money has been hiding under a baseball cap.

Hair-loss biotech Veradermics has become one of the year's biggest market surprises, with shares climbing more than 650% since its February IPO. CEO Reid Waldman says the obesity boom proved consumers are willing to pay out of pocket for treatments that improve quality of life. Investors apparently looked in the mirror and agreed.

💰 Novartis Pays $1.1B Upfront for Myricx to Expand Its ADC Arsenal
Novartis largely watched from the sidelines while rivals poured billions into antibody-drug conjugates. Apparently the company finally found something worth opening the checkbook for. The pharma giant will pay $1.1 billion upfront, plus up to $400 million in milestones, to acquire UK's Myricx Bio and its next-generation ADC platform. Rather than relying on traditional ADC payloads, Myricx uses a novel NMT inhibitor approach that could overcome resistance and broaden the technology across multiple tumor types.

🇨🇳 AstraZeneca Signs Another Massive China Deal Worth Up to $1.7B
AstraZeneca continues doubling down on Chinese innovation, signing a kidney disease partnership with CSPC Pharmaceutical worth up to $1.7 billion. The agreement includes $30 million upfront to discover siRNA therapies capable of targeting organs beyond the liver. It follows AstraZeneca's massive obesity collaboration with CSPC announced earlier this year, reinforcing how heavily large pharmas are leaning on Chinese biotech despite increasing geopolitical scrutiny.

🤖 Takeda Bets Up to $600M That AI Can Build Better Drugs
Takeda is paying Insilico Medicine $60 million upfront in a collaboration worth up to $600 million to discover new medicines using the company's Pharma.AI platform. Insilico will identify promising drug candidates while Takeda handles downstream development. The partnership also supports Takeda's transition toward becoming what it calls an AI-native discovery organization, showing artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly permanent fixture inside pharmaceutical R&D.

🤔 Genentech Cuts 103 Jobs While Signing $490M Breast Cancer Partnership
Genentech announced 103 layoffs tied to its ongoing research reorganization, then simultaneously signed a breast cancer collaboration worth up to $490 million with Astex Pharmaceuticals. The agreement includes $25 million upfront and gives Genentech exclusive rights to compounds discovered using Astex's fragment-based drug discovery platform. It serves as another reminder that pipeline expansion and workforce reductions often happen at the same time in today's biotech industry.

☎️ AI-Powered Business Calling Starting at $12/User
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💵 United Therapeutics Buys Thymmune for $140M
United Therapeutics acquired Thymmune for $140 million upfront to advance regenerative thymic cell therapies that could restore immune function and treat rare diseases.

🫁 Roche's KRAS Drug Beats Lumakras and Krazati in Phase 3
Roche's divarasib topped both Amgen's Lumakras and Bristol Myers Squibb's Krazati in Phase 3, strengthening its blockbuster ambitions in KRAS-mutated lung cancer.

✅ Vertex Expands Sickle Cell Gene Therapy Approval
The FDA expanded Casgevy into children ages two and older, making it the first approved gene therapy for young pediatric sickle cell disease patients.

📝 Scribe Therapeutics Files for an IPO
Backed by Jennifer Doudna, Scribe hopes public markets will fund clinical development of its next-generation CRISPR gene-silencing cardiovascular medicines.

🇨🇳 Fosun Pays Up to $198M to Join China's Psoriasis Race
Fosun paid $32 million upfront to license Junshi's late-stage IL-17A psoriasis antibody in a deal worth up to $198 million, joining Lilly and Novartis in the crowded market.

First, the tech companies wanted to organize the world's information. Then they wanted to help you write emails, generate code, and answer homework questions. Now they want to develop your next prescription drug.

Last week, Anthropic unveiled Claude Science, an AI platform built specifically for researchers. That alone wasn't surprising. Nearly every major AI company has spent the last two years chasing life sciences customers. The surprise came when Anthropic announced it also plans to develop drugs of its own, starting with treatments for neglected diseases. The company says building drugs alongside its customers will help it create better AI tools, effectively making it both a software vendor and, potentially, a future competitor.

The announcement reflects a much bigger trend. OpenAI, Google, Amazon and others are rapidly expanding into biotech, while companies like Insilico Medicine and Isomorphic Labs were founded around the idea that AI could reinvent drug discovery from day one. Meanwhile, nearly every major pharmaceutical company is building internal AI capabilities or signing partnerships to avoid falling behind. AI is no longer viewed as an optional tool. It's becoming standard lab equipment.

That doesn't mean robots are about to replace medicinal chemists. Experts are quick to point out that AI can accelerate target discovery, molecule design and data analysis, but biology still refuses to cooperate on a software engineer's timeline. Every promising compound still has to survive years of lab work, animal studies, manufacturing challenges and clinical trials before reaching patients.

Still, it's hard to ignore where this could lead. Today's AI companies mostly sell tools to biotech. Ten years from now, some may be competing directly with pharma. After all, the largest tech companies have market caps that dwarf nearly every pharmaceutical company on Earth. If they decide drug development deserves the same attention they gave search engines, smartphones and cloud computing, they certainly have the cash to hire experienced scientists and build the infrastructure.

Silicon Valley has officially walked into the lab. Whether it becomes biotech's best collaborator or biggest competitor remains to be seen.

That's how many fewer Americans were enrolled in Affordable Care Act Marketplace plans this year after enhanced subsidies expired. Enrollment dropped from 22.1 million to 19.2 million, highlighting how quickly healthcare coverage can change when affordability changes.

Here’s what biotech Redditors are talking about:

🚽 "Wait...Your Office Doesn't Have a Bathroom?"
One Reddit thread about toxic pharma cultures quickly took an unexpected turn. While commenters debated which Midwest pharma company the original poster was describing, readers became fixated on one detail: their building apparently didn't even have a bathroom. Between employees getting reported for walking too fast, drinking coffee in the wrong building and avoiding basic hallway conversations, most commenters agreed this wasn't normal. The bathroom situation, however, completely stole the show.

🧘 Laid Off? Here's How Reddit Says to Stay Sane
After being laid off for the first time, one Redditor asked a simple question: beyond updating your resume and submitting applications, how do you keep your spirits up and stay sharp during the job search? The responses were refreshingly practical. Network at vendor events, reconnect with old colleagues, hit the gym, learn a new skill, read more books, and most importantly, don't spend every waking hour doom-scrolling job boards. Sometimes taking care of yourself is the most productive thing you can do.

🦠 Ebola Response Faces New Challenges
Experts say foreign aid cuts have complicated efforts to contain Ebola outbreaks in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

💪 Protein Brewery Raises $20M
Dutch food biotech Protein Brewery secured €18 million ($20M) to expand production of sustainable fungal proteins made through zero-waste fermentation. Think protein maxxing with a sustainability twist.

💰 Cancer and Immunology Still Rule Venture Capital
Cancer and immunology startups captured more than $3.9 billion of biotech venture funding during the first half of 2026.

🏆 Roche Tops Oncology Reputation Rankings
Patient advocacy groups once again ranked Roche as oncology's most respected pharmaceutical company, ahead of AstraZeneca and Novartis.

🫁 Celea Therapeutics Raises $180M for Next-Generation Lung Fibrosis Drug
PureTech Health spinout Celea Therapeutics raised $180 million to advance deupirfenidone into Phase 3 testing for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive lung-scarring disease with few treatment options. The company believes its redesigned version of Roche's Esbriet can deliver similar efficacy with improved tolerability, potentially creating a new standard of care. Backed by RA Capital, Leaps by Bayer and PureTech, Celea also sees potential to expand the drug into other fibrotic diseases, making it one of this year's most well-funded respiratory startups.

🧠 July 7, 1843: The Scientist Who Made Neurons Visible Was Born
Before scientists could understand the brain, they first had to see it. That changed when Italian pathologist Camillo Golgi developed his groundbreaking silver nitrate "black reaction," a staining technique that made individual nerve cells visible under a microscope for the first time. His work revolutionized neuroscience, led to the discovery of the Golgi apparatus, and earned him the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. More than 180 years later, breakthroughs in brain science still build on the foundation Golgi helped create.

Thinking back to Veradermics, I have to imagine selling a hair-loss drug is one of the simpler gigs in pharma. No complicated disease education. No biomarker testing. Just one question: "Still have hair where you want it?"

Your biggest competitor probably isn't another drug. It's a really nice hat. If sales ever slow down, maybe it's time to launch an anti-hat awareness campaign.

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

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