"New wave of mega-mergers in 2026"
Aleth LifeSci Brief: 16 Jan 2026
ALETH / LIFESCI-BRIEF / 2026-01-16 / NEW WAVE OF MEGA-MERGERS IN 2026The Aleth Briefs trace each story to its original source and show how the week unfolded.
The week in five lines
Execs at JPM Healthcare conference see biopharma mega-mergers in 2026
Boston Scientific agreed to buy Penumbra at a $14.5bn enterprise value.
Trump asked Congress to codify US drug-price deals.
AbbVie signed a US pricing deal and pledged $100bn.
EQT approached UK’s Oxford Biomedica for a buyout.
In this edition
Tuesday: GLP-1 suicide warnings; Novo deal hunt; Menkes approval; US probe
Wednesday: UK OXB approach; Tecvayli phase 3; Jazz voucher sale
Thursday: US pricing; Boston Scientific-Penumbra; Novo grant; NICE NHS prices
Weekend catch-up
Healthcare dealmakers arrived at the J.P. Morgan conference betting on a “new wave of mega-mergers in 2026”.
Bankers and executives gathering in San Francisco on Friday expected 2026 tie-ups to rival the peaks of 2019 and 2021, when deal values approached half a trillion dollars, after a thin 2024 and a partial 2025 rebound. More forgiving antitrust scrutiny under the Trump administration has given companies confidence to weigh acquisitions of $30bn or more. Jeremy Meilman, JP Morgan’s global co-head of healthcare banking, said deals “get approved... that could have had more regulatory risk in the past“, and a JP Morgan survey found 60% expecting biotech M&A to accelerate.
US healthcare dealmakers hope for megamergers in 2026 - Reuters (RTÉ)
Monday 12 January
Abivax shares jumped 32% on report Lilly was weighing a EUR15bn takeover.
La Lettre reported Lilly was working towards a EUR15bn bid for the Paris-based biotech, whose obefazimod cleared a phase 3 trial in ulcerative colitis, and was seeking guidance if France’s foreign-investment screening would apply. France’s economy and finance ministry said it had received no formal request for approval and had had no contact with Lilly. Any acquisition of a strategic pharmaceutical company would fall under its screening regime. Neither company confirmed an approach.
Ready to put €15 billion on the table for biotech firm Abivax - La Lettre
Eli Lilly-Abivax rumour stirs markets, but no formal steps confirmed - Euro Biotech
AbbVie struck a drug-pricing deal with the US administration and pledged $100bn of US investment over ten years in exchange for tariff relief.
The company agreed to cut prices on certain Medicaid medicines and to sell Humira and other products direct to patients through TrumpRx, in return for exemption from branded-pharmaceutical import tariffs. It committed $100bn to US research, development and manufacturing over the next decade. Chairman and chief executive Robert Michael said the agreement let the company “move beyond policies that harm American innovation“. AbbVie was among the last of the large drugmakers to settle.
AbbVie paid $650m upfront to license RemeGen’s PD-1/VEGF bispecific
The deal for RC148, worth up to about $5.6bn with milestones and tiered royalties, gives AbbVie rights outside Greater China to a clinical-stage bispecific for solid tumours including non-small cell lung and colorectal cancer. It is the latest large upfront Western for a Chinese-originated asset in the PD-1/VEGF class.
Eli Lilly and Nvidia will build a $1bn AI drug-discovery lab in the Bay Area.
The co-innovation lab puts Lilly’s biologists alongside Nvidia’s model builders and runs on Nvidia’s BioNeMo software and Vera Rubin hardware. Its work is expected to begin in South San Francisco early this year. Unusually, the deal embeds a chipmaker inside drug discovery rather than merely selling compute into it.
The FDA rejected Atara and Pierre Fabre’s cell therapy Ebvallo a second time.
Announced on Monday, the complete response letter said the single-arm ALLELE trial the FDA had previously accepted is “no longer... adequate“ to support accelerated approval, citing confounded interpretability. Atara called it a “complete reversal of position“ by the FDA. Ebvallo (tabelecleucel) is already approved in Europe.
Pharma leaders at JPM urged Washington to out-compete China on biotech not try to block its rise.
With a run of deals for Chinese-originated drugs framing the week, executives cast China’s advance as a “Sputnik moment“ and pressed for faster, cheaper US clinical development. John Maraganore said “innovation should come from anywhere in the world“ and warned against letting biotech “become like semiconductors“.
JPM26: US biotech’s ‘Sputnik moment,’ - BioPharma Dive
Tuesday 13 January
The FDA asked drugmakers to strip the suicidal-behaviour warning from GLP-1 weight-loss drugs after a review found no increased risk.
The request covers Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy (semaglutide) and Saxenda (liraglutide) and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound (tirzepatide), removing a warning that has sat on the class since its move into obesity. The FDA’s review of 91 trials with 107,910 patients found no evidence of raised risk of suicidal thoughts, confirming a preliminary 2024 finding.
Novo Nordisk said it was back in the market for obesity deals of any size, months after losing Metsera to Pfizer.
Chief executive Mike Doustdar told Bloomberg at the JPM conference that Novo was “in the market for big or small“ obesity deals and ready to go “very big“, as it works to rebuild an obesity pipeline after being outbid for Metsera last year.
The FDA approved Sentynl’s Zycubo as the first treatment for Menkes disease, a rare and usually fatal copper-metabolism disorder in children.
The approval covers Zycubo (copper histidinate), a subcutaneous copper injection developed with Cyprium Therapeutics that bypasses the defective intestinal absorption caused by ATP7A mutations. In pooled single-arm data, early treatment cut the risk of death by nearly 80% against an untreated contemporaneous external-control cohort. The FDA had rejected the same application under four months earlier.
The Trump administration appears to have quietly closed its national-security investigation into pharmaceutical imports, according to Endpoints News.
Endpoints reported on Tuesday that the Commerce Department appeared to have concluded its Section 232 probe, leaving the president 90 days to decide on any action, which could include tariffs, and a further 15 days to act.
Exclusive: Trump administration appears to have ended its US trade probe into pharma - Endpoints News
Wednesday 14 January
Oxford Biomedica confirmed an unsolicited takeover approach from private equity group EQT, having rejected earlier proposals as too low.
The UK-listed cell and gene therapy manufacturer said that EQT’s approach concerning a possible cash offer followed earlier proposals the board had turned down as undervaluing the business. Under the takeover code EQT has until 5pm on 11 February to announce a firm intention to bid or walk away. This adds Oxford Biomedica to a run of private equity interest in London-listed companies.
Response to press speculation - Oxford Biomedica
J&J bispecific Tecvayli cut the risk of progression or death by 71% as a single agent in earlier-line multiple myeloma.
At the first pre-specified interim analysis of the phase 3 MajesTEC-9 trial, Tecvayli (teclistamab) monotherapy also reduced the risk of death by 40% against standard care in patients who had received one to three prior lines of therapy and were predominantly refractory to anti-CD38 therapy and Revlimid (lenalidomide). It is the second phase 3 win supporting a move of the drug out of late-line myeloma.
Tecvayli monotherapy demonstrates superior progression-free and overall survival as early as first relapse in multiple myeloma - Johnson & Johnson
Jazz Pharmaceuticals agreed to sell a priority review voucher for $200m, the highest price in a decade.
CEO Renee Gala disclosed the agreement at the JPM conference without naming the buyer. Voucher prices have been rising and a figure of $200m is a new benchmark. Jazz earned the voucher on the FDA’s August approval of brain-tumour drug Modeyso.
JPM26: Jazz inks $200M priority review voucher sale - Fierce Pharma
Thursday 15 January
Trump unveiled “The Great Healthcare Plan” and asked Congress to write his most-favoured-nation drug-pricing deals into law.
The four-part framework pairs the pricing codification with a shift of insurance subsidies into direct payments to consumers, an end to pharmacy-benefit-manager kickbacks and new price-transparency rules. Codifying the company-by-company deals would turn a set of executive-branch arrangements into a standing obligation that a later administration could not simply drop.
The Great Healthcare Plan - The White House
Boston Scientific agreed to buy clot-removal specialist Penumbra at an enterprise value of about $14.5bn, its second acquisition of the week.
The cash-and-stock deal values Penumbra at $374 a share, paid roughly 73% in cash and 27% in stock, with Boston Scientific funding the about $11bn cash portion from cash and new debt. Penumbra’s mechanical thrombectomy devices pull blood clots from veins and arteries. It follows Boston Scientific’s purchase of Valencia Technologies days earlier and ranks as the period’s largest single transaction.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation committed up to DKK5.5bn, about EUR736m, to its BioInnovation Institute through 2035.
The ten-year grant announced during JPM week funds the Copenhagen incubator to back more start-ups and widen into fields including AI and quantum technology. The institute has helped create more than 130 companies since 2018 and is one of the largest private initiatives responding to Europe’s early-stage funding gap.
Novo Nordisk Foundation grants DKK5.5bn to elevate innovation in Denmark & Europe
The new chief executive of NICE said NHS drug prices should not rise for years, resisting the US pressure now heading to Congress.
The FT reported that NICE’s new chief said giving in to US demands for higher UK payments would be a backward step for the health system, putting the UK’s cost-effectiveness gatekeeper directly against the pricing efforts underway in Washington.
NICE chief opposes higher NHS medicine prices - Financial Times
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