👋 Good morning! Between Christmas leftovers and end of year PTO, this is usually the dead zone for business news. The quiet week. The scroll-and-shrug season.

We went digging anyway.

Turns out the news wasn’t dead. It was just… moody.

According to a new Deloitte survey, the global pharma C-suite is split. European and Asian execs are feeling cautiously optimistic. U.S. leaders? They’re basically in their room listening to a full emo playlist. About 90 percent overseas say things are looking up, compared to less than 60 percent stateside.

Think 2000s emo rocker American versus a carefree European on a Vespa.

Tariff threats, one-off drug pricing deals, FDA staffing chaos. The vibes are off. But here’s the twist. Even as U.S. execs stare at the floor, nearly half say M&A is a top priority heading into 2026.

Translation: Confidence is down. Deal hunger is up.

💰 Sanofi Keeps Shopping With a $2.2B Dynavax Buy
Fresh off a very public spat with activist investors, Dynavax found a buyer. Sanofi agreed to pay $15.50 per share in cash for the vaccine maker, locking in a roughly $2.2 billion deal expected to close in early 2026. The prize is Heplisav-B, an approved adult hepatitis B vaccine, plus an early-stage shingles shot that could one day challenge Shingrix. Sanofi’s deal machine clearly did not take the holidays off.

💊 Novo Nordisk Drops the First FDA-Approved GLP-1 Weight Loss Pill
Last week, the FDA approved Novo’s oral version of Wegovy, making it the first GLP-1 pill cleared for weight loss. Patients taking the daily tablet lost an average of 16.6 percent of body weight, compared to 2.7 percent on placebo. No injections. No cold chain. Lilly, consider this your move.

⚖️ J&J Hit With a Record $1.56B Talc Verdict
A Baltimore jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $1.56 billion to a single plaintiff who linked her cancer to baby powder use. It is the largest talc award ever handed down against the company, topping last year’s $966 million verdict. The legal saga refuses to fade quietly.

🧬 Omeros Finally Scores Its First FDA Approval
After three decades in biotech and four years of regulatory heartbreak, Omeros got its first FDA nod. The agency approved narsoplimab, now branded Yartemlea, for a rare and deadly stem cell transplant complication. Shares surged nearly 80 percent on Christmas Eve. Some approvals really do come wrapped.

😬 BD Faces Antitrust Heat From Hernia Mesh Rival
Tela Bio sued BD, accusing the medtech giant of using its dominance to squeeze competitors out of the hernia repair market. According to the lawsuit, BD controls roughly two thirds of permanent mesh spending and more than three quarters of resorbable implants. Regulators are not the only ones watching market power these days.

🚔 Six Charged in $41M Biotech Stock Manipulation Scheme
Federal prosecutors charged six individuals in an insider trading and market manipulation scheme tied to two biotech stocks. The group allegedly pushed fake data and press releases to juice share prices. Olema Oncology and Opiant Pharmaceuticals were caught in the blast radius.

🧬 Gilead Buys Back Into Herpes Research.
Gilead paid $35 million upfront for two early-stage herpes antivirals targeting viral replication enzymes.

🧠 Praxis Scores Breakthrough Tag in Essential Tremor.
The FDA granted breakthrough designation to ulixacaltamide after strong Phase III data, sending shares up double digits.

🩸 Pfizer Confirms Patient Death in Hemophilia Study.
A patient died in an open-label extension trial of Pfizer’s Hympavzi, prompting renewed scrutiny.

🧪 Neurocrine Takes a Phase III Miss in Cerebral Palsy.
Valbenazine failed its late-stage trial, disappointing patients but barely moving Wall Street.

For years, Chinese biotech deals came with an asterisk. Political risk. IP anxiety. Regulatory what-ifs. In 2025, big pharma stopped pretending those concerns were deal breakers.

The numbers tell the story. Industry analysts tracked 142 China-linked biotech deals this year, slightly more than 2024 and nearly matching the highs of 2022. But volume is only half the picture. The money got louder. Total deal value surged to more than $92 billion in 2025, nearly doubling last year’s tally with some time still on the clock.

Average deal sizes followed suit. What used to be half-billion-dollar licensing bets are now routinely pushing $1.5 billion or more. Pfizer’s PD-1 x VEGF deal with 3SBio. Takeda’s oncology grab via Innovent Biologics. AstraZeneca’s latest KRAS wager with Jacobio Pharma. These are not exploratory toe dips. They are strategic commitments.

Why now? Because China’s biotech engine matured. Platforms are faster. Data quality improved. Pipelines are deeper. And Western pharma still needs growth. Patent cliffs do not care about geopolitics.

That does not mean the risks vanished. PwC and others continue to flag IP and compliance concerns. The Biosecure Act adds another layer of uncertainty, especially for companies touching U.S. government contracts. But here is the quiet truth. When deal pressure rises, pragmatism wins.

China-linked assets made up roughly 9 percent of global biotech deal value in 2022. By late 2025, that number climbed past 20 percent. For the first time, China is not just a sourcing option. It is a core lane.

Big pharma is not asking whether China matters anymore. It is asking how to stay competitive without it.

That is how far Ultragenyx shares fell on Monday after its late-stage bone disease drug failed to reduce fracture rates. Few numbers capture biotech risk more cleanly.

Biotech Reddit was equal parts bleak honesty and uncomfortable truth-telling this week. Two threads captured the current mood perfectly.

😰 75 final interviews. Zero offers.
A laid-off Stanford scientist shared a brutal job search reality: over 75 final interviews in the past year, no offers, and now couch surfing.

The community response split into two camps. One side showed empathy and pointed to a frozen hiring market, overqualified candidates, and companies interviewing “just in case.” The other side was more blunt: if you’re consistently making finals but never closing, something in your interview storytelling, references, or executive presence may be quietly working against you. Hard advice, but arguably the most useful kind.

👩‍💻 Why Big Biotech Is Killing Full Remote (And It’s Not About Culture).
Another popular thread asked why companies are suddenly so allergic to fully remote work. The most upvoted answer wasn’t about productivity or collaboration, it was about tax incentives.

Many companies receive city or state tax breaks in exchange for guaranteeing a physical employee presence to stimulate local economies. Fewer people in seats = fewer lunches bought, fewer apartments rented, and potentially lost incentives.

Other takes were more cynical but widely agreed upon: companies now have leverage, and stricter RTO policies conveniently push voluntary attrition ahead of planned layoffs. Several commenters summed it up perfectly: “We all logged into Zoom… from the same building.” 😆

Takeaway: The science is hard, but the job market politics might be harder. Whether it’s interviewing, relocation pressure, or return-to-office mandates, biotech careers in 2025 are being shaped as much by economics and incentives as by innovation.

🩻 Hologic AI Keeps Catching Missed Cancers.
New data shows its mammography AI flagged one third of prior false negatives and correctly localized most confirmed tumors.

❤️ Abbott’s Volt Nabs FDA Approval.
The FDA approved Abbott’s Volt pulsed field ablation system, throwing it into a crowded but fast-growing irregular heart rhythm market.

🫀 Edwards Lands a First-in-Class Valve Approval.
The FDA cleared Sapien M3, marking the first transcatheter mitral valve replacement of its kind. It allows a safer option for patients, along with a quicker recovery.

🧫 Eclipse Energy Turns Old Oil Wells Into Hydrogen Factories
Eclipse Energy is deploying microbes that feed on leftover oil deep underground and convert it into hydrogen gas. Instead of drilling harder, they let biology do the work. With millions of abandoned wells sitting idle, the company sees a massive energy recovery opportunity hiding in plain sight.

🔭 December 30, 1924 - Edwin Hubble announced that galaxies exist beyond the Milky Way. Humanity’s universe instantly got a lot bigger. And a lot harder to explain at dinner parties.

One last thing before we pop the champagne 🥂
No BioNucleus Briefing this Thursday… New Year’s Day truce. We’re back January 6 with the first biotech news and insights of 2026.

Happy New Year, and see you on the other side.

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