Editor’s Take: Major pharma companies continued to make moves, and AI remains a driving force in the industry.

This week on “The Friday Brief” … Some might have called this a slow news week, but still plenty to go around. Topping the list, Johnson & Johnson completed its $1 billion acquisition of Firefly Bio. Another of our Top 20 companies, Lilly, is partnering with Resilience on a $750 million advanced manufacturing investment near Cincinnati.

The push for more U.S. manufacturing chugs along, with Octapharma announcing a $1.5 billion investment in South Carolina.

One more Top 20 news item, as Viatris announced something we were telling you to look out for. The FDA approved the company’s once-weekly contraceptive patch, giving women a new, reversible, low-estrogen-dose option.

Back to acquisitions, argenx reached a $2.2 billion deal to buy out Forte Biosciences. Caldera Therapeutics is merging with Synlogic, and will become a publicly-traded company under the Caldera name. And another rebrand: Landmark Bio and Syngoi will both now operate under the name of their parent, Artis BioSolutions.

Latest in AI

AI front and center … Merck, Darmstadt, Germany, is adopting capabilities of an AI-native platform from Evinova, an AstraZeneca company. ICON is launching a multi-year agreement with Anthropic to deploy Claude across the clinical trial lifecycle. Meanwhile, Steriline has launched a set of AI tools for its sterile fill-finish lines.

Quick hits rounding out our coverage: Kyverna and ElevateBio are joining on U.S. commercial and global clinical supply of miv-cel. AbCellera and Vertex will collaborate on T-cell engagers targeting autoimmune diseases. ProBioGen will help advance VarmX’s Factor X program through cell line development. Celonic and Leukocare will support mutual clients in complex biologics development. And Harbour BioMed and Sinopharm are establishing an R&D “Innovation Consortium” in China.

So it turns out there was a lot coming out of this last week of July. Get the rest at contractpharma.com, and remember, sign up for our newsletters to have the latest emailed to you directly.

We’ll see you next week, on The Friday Brief.