👋 Hey, let’s get into it. President Trump touched down in Beijing with a heavyweight delegation stacked with tech titans, financiers, and industrial power players. Missing from the invite list? Pharma. In a world where semiconductors and AI now dominate geopolitical priority, drugmakers apparently got seated at the kids’ table.

That absence says plenty. While U.S. biotech increasingly looks to China for assets, speed, and deal flow, Washington’s biggest China photo op moved forward without a meaningful life sciences voice in the room.

💰 Bristol Myers Buys China Speed in $15.2B Hengrui Pact
Bristol Myers Squibb is paying $600 million upfront in a sweeping partnership with Hengrui Pharma worth up to $15.2 billion. The agreement gives BMS ex-China rights to four oncology and hematology assets while launching five joint discovery programs. Hengrui also gains China rights to four BMS immunology assets. The bigger prize may be development speed, with China often moving early-stage programs to clinic materially faster than Western peers. Big Pharma no longer wants to just buy molecules there. It wants the operating system too.

💉 Novo Fires Back With 27.7% Wegovy Data and Pill Momentum
The GLP-1 wars rage on as Novo Nordisk unveiled fresh data showing early responders on high-dose 7.2 mg Wegovy lost an average 27.7% of body weight at 72 weeks, while overall trial participants lost nearly 21%. That helps narrow the efficacy gap with Eli Lilly’s Zepbound. Novo also released oral Wegovy data showing early responders lost 21.6% in the OASIS 4 study. Translation: Novo is attacking on two fronts, injection and pill, as it tries to reclaim obesity market momentum.

🪓 Takeda Starts “New Era” With 4,500 Job Cuts
Takeda says it is entering a growth-focused new chapter, but thousands of employees will not be making the trip…brutal. The company plans to eliminate roughly 4,500 roles during fiscal 2026 as part of a restructuring aimed at simplification and cost control. The move should generate major savings by 2028. Takeda is still dealing with the post-patent collapse of Vyvanse revenue, proving that “transformation” often arrives carrying a spreadsheet.

👁️ Bayer’s Eylea Sales Fall 24% as Biosimilars Arrive
Bayer reported first-quarter Eylea sales down 24% year over year to €623 million ($731 million) as biosimilar pressure finally hits hard. Rival competition from Roche’s Vabysmo has already weighed on the franchise, and now copycats are accelerating the decline. Bayer says the newer 8 mg version now represents 46% of franchise sales and could stabilize part of the business. Still, this is what blockbuster gravity looks like once exclusivity disappears.

💸 Boehringer Bets $478M on Immunitas
Boehringer committed up to $478 million for a preclinical antibody targeting chronic inflammatory and autoimmune disease pathways globally.

😬 AstraZeneca’s $800M Deal Hits Friction
Phase 3 immunogenicity issues weakened AstraZeneca’s hypoparathyroidism candidate acquired through its 2024 Amolyt Pharma purchase.

💵 Pfizer and Arvinas Sell Breast Cancer Drug
Rigel paid $85 million upfront for global rights to Veppanu plus milestone payments and royalties that could total up to $320 million.

📄 Kyverna Starts Autoimmune CAR-T Filing
Kyverna launched a rolling FDA submission for miv-cel in stiff person syndrome. If successful, it could be the first autoimmune CAR-T to reach the market.

🏭 Bora Buys MacroGenics Facility
Bora agreed to pay $122.5 million for MacroGenics’ Maryland manufacturing site and warehouse operations, furthering its US expansion.

😴 Alkermes Gets Fast Win for Sleep Drug
Lumryz hit phase 3 goals in idiopathic hypersomnia just 3 months after Alkermes acquired it via the $2.37 billion purchase of Avadel.

🛍️ Merck Wants More Deals
Merck KGaA said external acquisitions remain critical to rebuilding its thin pharma pipeline, and the company plans to broaden its M&A scope.

In modern America, bipartisan agreement is rare. But apparently not impossible. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary is officially out, ending a brief and chaotic run that managed to frustrate just about everyone.

Makary reportedly “resigned,” though multiple reports suggest the White House had already approved plans to remove him. President Trump hinted as much Tuesday, noting the deputy commissioner would take over temporarily while a replacement search begins. In Washington, voluntary exits sometimes arrive with a shove.

Makary’s problems came from every direction. Conservatives blasted him for not moving aggressively enough on abortion pill restrictions. Others were furious over mixed messaging on flavored vapes. Drugmakers complained of inconsistent standards, shifting goalposts, and leadership churn. FDA career staff watched respected veterans depart while morale cratered.

Then there was the contradiction problem. Some drugs faced tougher scrutiny while Makary simultaneously backed expedited pathways critics said invited politics into scientific review. That is a hard balance to sell when neither side trusts your motives.

The practical question now is whether leadership changes matter if the same policies remain. Fast-track ideas favored by the administration may survive. So could the uncertainty industry hates most.

For FDA watchers, Makary’s exit solves one issue and creates another: nobody knows who is really steering the ship… though we can probably make an educated guess. Hint: it’s probably not going to be the next FDA Commissioner either.

This is the number of pharma CEOs who crossed the $30 million compensation mark in 2025. Eli Lilly’s David Ricks led the pack at $36.7 million, proving weight-loss drugs are good for more than patients.

Here’s what biotech Redditors are talking about:

🎓 Biotech Reality Check for New Grads
A Reddit thread asking for biotech’s hidden truths for those just getting into the industry quickly turned into career counseling. The top response said the most stable and lucrative jobs are often not scientific roles at all, but commercial ones like sales, analytics, and operations. Others noted industry success depends less on one breakthrough experiment and more on making processes repeatable at scale, a stark contrast from academia. Romantic lab visions met GMP paperwork.

📨 Stop Asking for Hiring Manager Contacts
Another biotech worker begged strangers to stop requesting private hiring manager info for big-company roles. Many commenters sympathized, saying desperation in a frozen job market is driving awkward networking behavior. Others argued blind applications still work and referrals are not magic tickets. The consensus: networking helps, but sending a DM to a stranger at 1 a.m. asking them to connect you with the hiring manager…probably does not.

♻️ FDA Wants Old Drugs Recycled
The FDA is exploring repurposing older medicines where science supports new uses but incentives are weak… No, this doesn’t mean you should hang on to the Tylenol in the back of your cabinet that expired in 2015.

📉 Hims & Hers Shares Drop 15%
Hims & Hers shares sank after a wider quarterly loss and softer forward outlook.

🤫 RFK Jr. Attacks Vaccines…Quietly
Public vaccine rhetoric cooled, but internal federal safety reviews reportedly continue behind the scenes, per the NY Times.

🤖 Isomorphic Labs Raises $2.1B for AI Drug Design Platform
Alphabet-backed Isomorphic Labs just landed a massive $2.1 billion Series B round to scale its AI drug design engine, IsoDDE. The company uses systems built from DeepMind’s AlphaFold lineage to predict how molecules interact with proteins and accelerate medicine creation. Plenty of startups promise faster drug discovery. Few do it with Google money, Nobel-level founders, and one of biotech’s biggest private rounds ever.

💉 May 14, 1796 — Edward Jenner Starts the Vaccine Era
On this day, Edward Jenner used material from a cowpox lesion to inoculate eight-year-old James Phipps against smallpox, launching the world’s first successful vaccination. It was an audacious experiment that helped create modern immunology. Today vaccines involve clinical trials, regulators, and sterile manufacturing. Back then it was closer to, “hear me out… ”

Huge respect to Jenner, but imagine being the first test subject. “So first, I’m putting cowpox in your skin. Then we circle back with actual smallpox to see if it worked.” Fortunately for humanity, he happened to be right.

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

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