Aleth LifeSci Brief: 8-12 Sep 2025
Merck scraps its $1bn+ London lab
ALETH / LIFESCI-BRIEF / 2025-09-12 / MERCK SCRAPS ITS £1BN LONDON LABIn this edition
Tuesday: Novartis buys Tourmaline; Rapport epilepsy data; Regeneron allergy wins
Thursday: GTCR buys Zentiva; UK ABPI warning; Merck’s London retreat; US-China drug curbs
Friday: UK pricing talks; AbbVie Rinvoq exclusivity; LB Pharma IPO pop; Avidity offering
Monday 8 September
Permira put its US drug-manufacturing business Cambrex up for sale, seeking a valuation of as much as $4bn.
The private equity firm has started a sale process for Cambrex, a contract development and manufacturing organisation that makes drugs and ingredients for other pharmaceutical companies, and has approached about a dozen possible buyers, according to the Financial Times. Permira bought Cambrex in 2019 for around $2bn.
Contract manufacturers with US plants have gained from drugmakers building domestic capacity and stockpiling inventory ahead of the tariffs the Trump administration has threatened on imported medicines.
Sources:
Permira explores sale of Cambrex at up to $4bn - Financial Times
Summit Therapeutics reported the first Phase 3 results for its lung-cancer drug ivonescimab in Western patients, a clear win on one measure and a near miss on the other.
At the World Conference on Lung Cancer in Barcelona on 7 September, the company said the global HARMONi trial met its co-primary endpoint of delaying disease progression in patients with EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer whose disease had returned after a third-generation targeted drug: ivonescimab plus chemotherapy gave a hazard ratio of 0.52, a median 6.8 months to progression against 4.4 on chemotherapy alone.
Overall survival, a secondary endpoint, ran in the drug’s favour but did not clear the bar for significance at the primary analysis in April, at a hazard ratio of 0.79, improving to a nominal 0.78 on longer follow-up. Ivonescimab, a PD-1/VEGF bispecific antibody, had previously beaten Merck’s Keytruda in a head-to-head Chinese trial. HARMONi is its first Phase 3 read-out in a Western population.
Sources:
Longer-term follow-up shows improving overall survival trend in Phase 3 HARMONi - Summit Therapeutics
AstraZeneca’s Tagrisso combination extended survival in EGFR-mutated lung cancer, with patients living a median of nearly four years.
The final analysis of the Phase 3 FLAURA2 trial, presented at the same Barcelona conference on 7 September, showed that adding chemotherapy to Tagrisso in previously untreated EGFR-mutated advanced disease lifted median overall survival to 47.5 months, against 37.6 months for Tagrisso alone, a hazard ratio of 0.77. Grade 3 or worse side effects were more common with the combination, at 70% against 34%, reflecting the added chemotherapy.
Johnson & Johnson’s rival Rybrevant-based regimen has also reported an overall survival win over Tagrisso, setting the two combinations against each other in the same first-line setting.
Sources:
Tagrisso plus chemotherapy demonstrated a median overall survival of nearly four years - AstraZeneca
Eli Lilly said Britain will be among the first countries to get its once-a-day weight-loss pill next year.
Patrik Jonsson, the company’s international president, told The Times he expects orforglipron, an oral GLP-1 drug taken once daily with or without food, to reach the UK in 2026 subject to regulatory approval. An oral GLP-1 would widen access beyond the injectable weight-loss drugs now on the market; in the Phase 3 ATTAIN-1 trial reported in August, orforglipron produced weight loss of about 12% at the top dose.
Sources:
The UK government sounded out private investors about financing up to 200 new neighbourhood health centres in England.
Ministers have approached finance firms about backing the centres under long-term contracts to build and maintain them, a structure that resembles the private finance initiative, the Financial Times reported. The plan is part of a push to move NHS care out of hospitals and into community settings, and it revives the argument over private capital in the health service.
Sources:
UK sounds out private finance for up to 200 neighbourhood health centres - Financial Times
Tuesday 9 September
Novartis agreed to buy Tourmaline Bio for about $1.4bn, adding an anti-inflammatory antibody to its heart-disease pipeline.
The deal, announced on 9 September, pays $48.00 a share in cash, about a 59% premium to Tourmaline’s previous close. Tourmaline’s lead drug, pacibekitug, is an anti-IL-6 antibody ready for Phase 3 that targets the residual inflammation implicated in atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease; in a Phase 2 study it cut a key marker of inflammation, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, by 85% at three months. It joins a cardiovascular portfolio Novartis has been building through a run of deals.
Sources:
Rapport Therapeutics’ experimental epilepsy drug met its goal in a mid-stage trial.
The company said on 8 September that its open-label Phase 2a study of RAP-219 in patients with drug-resistant focal seizures met its primary endpoint, with 85.2% achieving at least a 30% reduction in seizure activity and 24% becoming seizure-free. RAP-219 selectively blocks an AMPA-receptor subtype concentrated in the brain regions where focal seizures begin. Rapport plans to start two Phase 3 trials in the third quarter of 2026.
Sources:
Rapport announces positive topline results from Phase 2a trial of RAP-219 - Rapport Therapeutics
Regeneron reported two Phase 3 wins for a new kind of allergy treatment, one for cat allergy and one for birch pollen.
In trials reported on 8 September, antibodies designed to neutralise the main cat allergen cut eye itching by 52% against placebo, and antibodies against the main birch pollen allergen cut it by 51%, with the effect seen a week after a single dose. The approach blocks specific allergens directly rather than damping the immune response broadly. Regeneron plans further Phase 3 work on the birch programme by the end of 2025 and on the cat programme in the first half of 2026.
Sources:
Regeneron advances allergy pipeline with two positive Phase 3 trials - Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
Wednesday 10 September
Novo Nordisk said it would cut about 9,000 jobs and lowered its profit forecast for the year.
The reductions, announced on 10 September, amount to roughly 11.5% of the company’s 78,400 staff, with about 5,000 of them in Denmark. Novo cut its 2025 operating profit growth guidance, at constant exchange rates, to a range of 4 to 10%, from the 10 to 16% it gave in August, and expects around 8 billion Danish kroner in one-off restructuring costs. It framed the retrenchment as a response to a more competitive obesity market, where the US rival Eli Lilly has been taking share.
Sources:
The Trump administration published its Make Our Children Healthy Again strategy, a wide set of health and food-policy proposals aimed at children.
Released on 9 September by the MAHA Commission, which the health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. chairs, the strategy lists more than 120 measures across research, regulation, industry collaboration and public awareness. Among them are a new childhood vaccine framework, a crackdown on prescription drug advertising violations, a review of how sunscreens are regulated, and a reconsideration of fluoride in drinking water.
Sources:
The MAHA Strategy - The White House
Thursday 11 September
The buyout firm GTCR agreed to buy the European generic drugmaker Zentiva from Advent International.
Advent, which bought Zentiva from Sanofi in 2018, said on 11 September that it would sell the company, which supplies more than 100 million patients across more than 30 European countries, with completion expected in early 2026. Neither side disclosed a price; the Financial Times put the value at 4.1 billion euros.
It is the second large private-equity generics deal in Europe this year, after London-based CapVest took control of Stada, as buyout firms treat the region’s generics platforms as a place to deploy capital while branded pharma faces pricing and tariff pressure.
Sources:
Zentiva announces sale from Advent to GTCR - Advent International
GTCR buys Zentiva from Advent in 4.1bn euro deal - Financial Times
The British pharmaceutical industry’s trade body warned that the UK is falling down the global rankings for life-sciences investment.
In a report with PwC on 11 September, the ABPI said foreign direct investment into UK life sciences was about 58% lower in 2023, at £795m, than in 2017, at £1.9bn, pushing the UK from second to seventh in the world.
It blamed the operating environment: the rebate the industry pays on newer branded medicines reached 23.5% of sales in 2023, against 5.7% in France and 7% in Germany, and only 37% of new medicines are fully available in the UK for their licensed uses, against 90% in Germany. The warning landed as the government negotiated the long-delayed sector plan.
Sources:
Merck scrapped a planned £1bn research centre in London and will cut 125 science jobs in the city.
The US company, known as MSD outside North America, has abandoned the site at Belgrove House in King’s Cross, which was under construction and due to open around 2027, and will leave laboratories at the London Bioscience Innovation Centre and the Francis Crick Institute by the end of the year.
A spokesperson said the decision reflected the UK’s failure to make meaningful progress on what the company called the undervaluation of innovative medicines by successive governments. The move removes a marquee commitment from Britain’s pitch to life-sciences investors, and it reinforced the ABPI’s warning made the same day.
Sources:
The Trump administration is weighing severe restrictions on medicines sourced from China.
A draft executive order reported by the New York Times on 10 September would subject US-China drug licensing deals to national security review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, add scrutiny and fees for applications that rely on clinical data generated in China, and offer incentives to move manufacturing of China-dependent drugs back to the US.
Much of the pharmaceutical supply chain, from generic ingredients to experimental therapies, runs through China, and companies including Pfizer and AstraZeneca oppose the measures. The White House said it was not actively considering the draft.
Sources:
Trump administration weighs restrictions on medicines from China - The New York Times
Friday 12 September
UK health officials sought to reopen talks with the pharmaceutical industry over drug pricing, days after Merck pulled its London investment.
The government wants to restart negotiations on pricing and market access, the Financial Times reported on 11 September, after a run of pullbacks capped by Merck’s decision to scrap its £1bn research centre. At the centre of the dispute is the Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicines Pricing, Access and Growth, under which companies repay a rising share of their NHS branded-medicine revenue, a rebate the industry says has become punitive and which has stalled investment decisions.
Sources:
UK seeks to reopen pharma pricing talks after Merck pulls London centre - Financial Times
AbbVie shares hit a record high after the company said its second best-selling drug faces no generic competition until 2037.
In a filing on 11 September, AbbVie disclosed that it had settled patent litigation with the generic manufacturers seeking to copy Rinvoq, its JAK-inhibitor pill for rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases, and that, assuming a paediatric extension is granted, no generic version is expected in the US before April 2037. The shares rose about 4% to a record, Reuters reported.
Sources:
LB Pharmaceuticals jumped 27% on its first day of trading after a $285m IPO.
The company priced its upsized offering at $15 a share, raising $285m, and the stock opened about 27% higher when it began trading on the Nasdaq on 11 September, implying a valuation of around $380m, according to Bloomberg. LB Pharmaceuticals is developing LB-102, a reworked version of the older antipsychotic amisulpride, for schizophrenia and bipolar depression. A first-day gain of that size is an uncommon result in a thin biotech IPO market.
Sources:
LB Pharmaceuticals announces pricing of its upsized initial public offering - LB Pharmaceuticals
LB Pharmaceuticals jumps 27% after raising $285 million in IPO - Bloomberg
Avidity Biosciences raised about $600m in a stock sale, and its shares fell as investors read the move as dimming a Novartis takeover.
The company priced an upsized offering of 15 million shares at $40 on 11 September, up from a proposed $500m the day before. The raise came a day after Avidity reported one-year data for del-zota, its antibody-oligonucleotide conjugate for a form of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, showing gains across measures of physical function and dystrophin restored to as much as 58% of normal levels, with a US filing planned for the end of 2025.
Avidity had been the subject of buyout speculation, and Endpoints News reported that the equity raise, unusual for a company expecting an imminent sale, was read by investors as making a near-term Novartis deal less likely.
Sources:
Avidity Biosciences announces pricing of upsized public offering - Avidity Biosciences
del-zota demonstrated reversal of disease progression in EXPLORE44 - Avidity Biosciences
Avidity shares fall after $500m offering, dimming hopes of a Novartis buyout - Endpoints News
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