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The Friday Brief for October 16, 2026: More Acquisitions Lead the Way

Labcorp acquires assets of BioReference Health, and Agilent is buying the digital pathology software provider Proscia.

Editor’s Take: More acquisitions were just the most attention-grabbing headlines in a varied and busy week in pharma.

This week in “The Friday Brief” … Big money moving in acquisitions. Labcorp reached agreement with OPKO Health to acquire assets of BioReference Health. Taking on this lab testing business comes at a price tag of $722 million.

Agilent is acquiring Proscia for $270 million; Proscia provides digital pathology software for clinical and life sciences customers.

Meanwhile in partnerships … Vir Biotechnology struck a deal with Gilead to discover and engineer T-cell engager development candidates. Scinai Biopharma has a development and clinical manufacturing agreement with a U.S.-based biopharma company. This is for an investigational oncology product, and expands a previously disclosed engagement.

Lonza reached a deal with Qurient to use CDK7 inhibitors in dual-payload ADC applications. Lonza also announced it is expanding its accelerated DNA-to-IND offering beyond monoclonal antibodies.

Catalent announced a commercial supply agreement with Mantra, to provide CDMO services for Mantra’s oral gel product platform. Charles River Labs says it will support Magellan Stem Cells in development and clinical advancement of stem cell-based therapies.

AtomVie Radiopharma and Jubilant Radiopharma are teaming up on logistics, regulatory, and last-mile distribution for a portfolio of radiopharmaceutical programs. In AI news, Deep Origin and BioAge Labs are coming together on multi-target, AI-driven drug discovery. The two sides say this partnership has already achieved an initial milestone.

And IQVIA is expanding its partnership with Veeva Systems, selecting several Veeva applications to be deployed across clinical development studies.

Odds and Ends

A few last items to wrap up. GSK is investing more than $800 million to expand facilities in Montgomery County, Pa. CurTec invested $10 million to expand operations in Westminster, SC. And UCB dedicated the future site of its U.S. biologics manufacturing campus in Gwinnett County, Ga.

We have more for you to read about this week’s wheelings and dealings at contractpharma.com. Also, don’t forget to sign up for our newsletters so you get the latest delivered directly to you.

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

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