Bristol Myers Squibb Co has signalled a commitment to artificial intelligence with a strategic agreement with Anthropic PBC to deploy the AI tool Claude across the company’s research, clinical development, manufacturing, commercial and corporate functions. Announced on 20 May, the agreement will make the technology available to more than 30,000 BMS employees. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
A UK company with an ambition to develop a new class of therapeutics based on laboratory grown red blood cells has raised £3.2 million in seed funding. The financing was announced on 7 May and awarded to Scarlet Therapeutics Ltd which was founded by the University of Bristol, UK, professors Ash Toye and Jan Frayne. The company’s technology platform is based on engineered red blood cells with a potential for delivering therapeutic proteins in vivo to humans. The proteins remain inside the red blood cell membrane and therefore are not recognised by the immune system.
ERS Genomics Ltd, which manages licensing agreements for the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing tool, is to supply the technology to Aurigene Pharmaceutical Services Ltd in India, enabling the company to integrate gene editing into its drug discovery activities. Aurigene is a global contract research, development and manufacturing organisation. The deal was announced on 13 May.
A gene therapy developed to treat hearing loss has been given an accelerated approved by the US Food and Drug Administration following the results of an ongoing single-arm trial. Developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc, Otarmeni (lunsotogene parvec) was approved on 23 April and is the first gene therapy authorised for a genetic hearing loss. The disorder, OTOF-related hearing loss, is an ultra-rare condition affecting about 50 children born every year in the US. It is caused by variants in the OTOF gene and the lack of a functional otoferlin protein.
Baxfendy (baxdrostat), a small molecule drug in-licensed and developed by AstraZeneca Plc, has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat adults with hypertension – a disease estimated to affect 1.4 billion people worldwide and a leading risk factor for cardiovascular disease and premature death. Announced on 18 May, the approval is for the use of Baxfendy in combination with other antihypertensive medicines to lower blood pressure in adults who are not adequately controlled.
Eli Lilly and Co’s agreement on 20 April to acquire Kelonia Therapeutics Inc in a deal worth up to $7 billion puts the company in place to exploit the emerging field of in vivo CAR-T therapy which has been described by analysts as a way to achieve therapeutic value without a complex production step. This compares with the traditional ex vivo approach in which T cells are extracted from a patient, modified in a laboratory, and then reinfused into the patient.
AstraZeneca Plc has reported trial data for a new combination therapy directed against muscle-invasive bladder cancer which showed improvements in event-free survival for the patients concerned. The muscle-invasive disease is estimated to affect one in four people with bladder cancer and arises when a tumour invades the bladder’s muscle wall. The standard treatment for these patients is surgery, with or without an adjuvant treatment.
Bristol Myers Squibb Co announced a drug discovery and development agreement with Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals Co Ltd on 12 May which is expected to yield 13 new products across the oncology, haematology, and immunology sectors and be commercialised across the globe. The deal comes as Hengrui is expanding its market presence outside China and BMS is taking steps to generate new revenue in response to a loss of patent protection on some important medicines.
A panel of life science investors raised concerns at the AngloNordic conference in London on 23 April that early-stage biotech companies are struggling to raise finance. Stephen Hansen, director of biopharma intelligence at BioCentury, cited data showing pre-clinical companies made up 41-42% of financings in 2021/22, but just 25% in 2025. He worried that a vital part of the biotech sector was being neglected in favour of clinical stage ventures, saying: "Somebody's got to be making companies....
Novartis continued to navigate the patent cliff in the first quarter of 2026 as sales of leading drugs such as Entresto for heart failure faced stiff competition from generics. Net sales for the company as a whole fell by 5% to $13 billion at constant exchange rates and by 1% at actual rates. Operating income contracted by an even larger amount as the company increased spending on research and development. The allocation for R&D in the quarter was $2.7 billion compared with $2.4 billion a year earlier.