While much of the biotech industry is focused on meetings and dealmaking at the J.P. Morgan (JPM) Healthcare Conference, a rumor has cut through the JPM noise. The possibility of Eli Lilly making a move on Abivax is back on the table, with a price tag that would imply a valuation close to twice the French company’s current market capitalisation at €8.4 billion ($9.8 billion).
bit.bio has raised $50 million in a series C round led by M&G Investments to support the next phase of its human cell programming business. The Cambridge-based company develops defined human cells using its opti-ox technology, supplying reproducible cell types to researchers and drug developers for use in drug discovery.
Roche is back in China — and this time at a very different price point. In a renewed partnership with MediLink Therapeutics, the Swiss pharmaceutical group has secured a second antibody–drug conjugate (ADC), underlining how the first collaboration has paid dividends for both sides.
Just over a year and a half ago, Swiss biotech Numab AG, based in Horgen on Lake Zurich, made the headlines when it sold a single antibody to Johnson & Johnson for US$1.25 billion via a spin-out vehicle. No back-loaded milestones, no future contingencies — but cash up front, as one might say, straight into the pocket.
Patent disputes are part of everyday life in pharma. What is unusual is the timing. More than three years after the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Bayer has launched a broad patent offensive against the makers of mRNA vaccines – just as the market has cooled and the pandemic feels firmly in the rear-view mirror. Understandable from a financial perspective, perhaps, but still raising questions about the timing.
Paris-based start-up Enodia Therapeutics has secured €20.7 million in seed funding to advance its early-stage pipeline of targeted protein degradation. Elaia, Pfizer Ventures and Bpifrance led the Seed financing under the InnoBio investment framework, with further contributions from Wallonie Entreprendre, Argobio Studio, MACSF, the Institut Pasteur, InvestSud, Sambrinvest and Mission BioCapital.
Paris-based private equity firm Andera Partners has kicked off 2026 with a surge of cross-border activity, leading two significant Series A financings for U.S. life sciences ventures. The back-to-back rounds of the French investment fund signal a commitment to innovative startups in the United States, where both companies are headquartered and conducting key development operations
Swiss biotechnology company TECregen, based in Basel, has raised CHF 10 million (about €11 million) in seed financing to advance therapies designed to restore immune function by regenerating the thymus, an organ central to T-cell development but rarely targeted by drugs.
4 years after its initial series A round, Engitix has completed a $25 million series A extension, led by Netherton Investments, which invests on behalf of billionaire hedge fund founder Mike Platt. The London-based biotech is developing therapies that target the extracellular matrix (ECM) in solid tumors and fibrosis, an area less crowded than more established drug discovery approaches.
The acquisition of Oxford-based Dark Blue Therapeutics by US biotechnology company Amgen Inc. has produced a German beneficiary: Hamburg-based Evotec SE. Through an early collaboration with the Oxford scientists, Evotec secured an equity stake and will now participate in the proceeds of the transaction.
Roche
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Bayer AG
Picture from Ferdinand Stöhr on Unsplash 
Photo from Giulia Bertelli on Unsplash 
Engitix
Evotec SE