Editor’s Take: Licensing agreements covered antibody development, AI technology, and subcutaneous formulations, to name a few.

This week on “The Friday Brief” … leading off with more M&A activity as we enter the final third of 2026.

Lilly has agreed to acquire Merida Biosciences for nearly $3 billion. PerkinElmer completed its acquisition of SimoTech, first announced last month. And RedHill Biopharma has divested its 70% stake in the H. pylori treatment Talicia to a subsidiary of Apotex.

Two deals this week about which details are a bit scarce. Both Aurigene and Lifecore announced agreements with global pharmaceutical companies, but what those companies are was not announced.

One major player, Roche, did have a couple of pieces of news. They’re partnering with Simcere on commercialization of a tri-specific antibody, and with Treeline to study a candidate for B-cell lymphomas.

Similarly, a few news items from Boehringer Ingelheim. BI is extending its clinical data partnership with Lifebit for another three years. And they are the latest to license Owkin’s K Pro AI Scientist, this for accelerating discovery in oncology and immunology.

Another company that interfaces with Owkin, AstraZeneca, successfully completed a license agreement with Dizal for Zegfrovy, a lung cancer treatment. Alteogen has signed a more than $3 billion licensing deal with Novartis for development and commercialization of certain subcutaneous products.

We talk often about patent cliff pitfalls—AIM ImmunoTech extended its IP protection for Ampligen in the U.S. until 2039.

Finally, the PIPAC consortium, in Europe, successfully completed a pilot program validating a continuous manufacturing platform for APIs.

That’s all we have time for in this rundown. Go to contractpharma.com for the rest of our daily news coverage. And don’t forget to sign up for our family of newsletters to get updates straight to your inbox.

Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next week on The Friday Brief.