Compared to the previous years, 2024 has been a relatively slow year for mergers and acquisitions in the pharmaceutical space. The largest acquisition of 2024 doesn’t nearly match Pfizer’s acquisition of Seagen for $43 billion in 2023, or Amgen’s Horizon buyout for $27.8 billion in 2022.
In contrast, the year 2025 has already started strong, with Johnson & Johnson’s acquisition of Intra-Cellular for $14.6 billion, giving industry players hope for the new year to see an increase in acquisition deals.
While there were fewer significantly large acquisitions this past year, the deals that were closed give the industry important clues about the direction that the largest pharmaceutical players will be taking going forward. For instance, companies in the weight loss space have been the center of several major takeover deals. Transactions in the neuroscience, oncology and autoimmune areas have also dominated the landscape, as pharma’s interest in these key areas continues to grow.
Here’s an overview of the 10 largest acquisition deals seen in the pharmaceuticals space over the course of the year 2024.
Catalent
Buyer: Novo Holding
Deal value: $16.5 billion
Completion date: December 18
Novo’s buyout of Catalent, a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), was the largest acquisition in the pharma industry last year. The deal, which generated controversy in the industry, was part of Novo Nordisk’s strategy to increase its manufacturing capabilities of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic, as demand for this drug class has recently skyrocketed.
Catalent was founded in 2007 in Somerset, New Jersey, as a provider of drug delivery technologies and drug development and manufacturing services, including biologics and gene therapy products. Over the course of the past decade, the company entered the GLP-1 space and positioned itself as a major manufacturer of these highly in-demand drugs.
Karuna Therapeutics
Buyer: Bristol Myers Squibb
Deal value: $14 billion
Completion date: March 18
Bristol Myers Squibb acquired Boston-based biotech company Karuna Therapeutics in a bid to strengthen its neuroscience portfolio. The deal granted the big pharma ownership over Karuna’s lead asset, KarXT (xanomeline-trospium), as well as other drug candidates in the early and preclinical stages.
KarXT received FDA approval in September, becoming the first antipsychotic drug to treat schizophrenia that targets cholinergic receptors rather than dopamine receptors, which are the primary target of current standard of care treatments. The drug is currently in registrational trials as an adjunctive therapy to existing standard of care agents in schizophrenia and for the treatment of psychosis in Alzheimer’s disease, with potential to expand into additional indications.
ImmunoGen
Buyer: AbbVie
Deal value: $10.1 billion
Completion date: February 12
The acquisition of ImmunoGen added the company’s flagship antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) to AbbVie’s oncology portfolio. Elahere (mirvetuximab soravtansine-gynx) had received accelerated FDA approval in November 2022 for the treatment of folate receptor-alpha (FRα) positive platinum-resistant ovarian cancer (PROC), making it the first ADC approved for ovarian cancer.
In March 2024, shortly after the acquisition, Elahere was granted full approval status by the FDA. The deal also added multiple other next-generation ADC candidates to AbbVie’s pipeline of oncology treatments in preclinical and clinical development, covering a wide range of solid tumors and hematologic malignancies.
Cerevel
Buyer: AbbVie
Deal value: $8.7 billion
Completion date: August 1
AbbVie’s buyout of Cerevel was the second major acquisition the big pharma spearheaded in the past year, granting it access to a wide pipeline of neuroscience programs, with drug candidates covering indications across psychiatry conditions, migraine and Parkinson’s disease.
One of the major selling points of the deal was Emraclidine, a potential best-in-class antipsychotic for the treatment of schizophrenia. Unfortunately for AbbVie, two phase 2 trials investigating the drug failed to meet their primary endpoint in November, just a couple of months after the acquisition was completed. In contrast, the drug candidate tavapadon successfully completed a phase 3 study in Parkinson’s disease in September.
Alpine Immune Sciences
Buyer: Vertex Pharmaceuticals
Deal value: $4.9 billion
Completion date: May 19
Vertex entered an acquisition agreement with Alpine Immune Sciences to boost its autoimmune and inflammatory disease pipeline. The Seattle-based company specialized in the development of protein-based immunotherapies through its proprietary protein engineering technology.
As part of the deal, AbbVie gained ownership over Alpine’s lead asset, povetacicept, which entered phase 3 trials not long after the acquisition. The drug candidate has shown with best-in-class potential as a treatment in IgA nephropathy, a serious autoimmune disease affecting the kidneys with no approved therapies that target its underlying causes.
CymaBay Therapeutics
Buyer: Gilead Sciences
Deal value: $4.3 billion
Completion date: March 22
Gilead acquired CymaBay Therapeutics with the goal of adding its lead product candidate to its existing portfolio of treatments targeting the liver. The drug candidate, seladelpar, had shown positive results as a treatment for primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) in a pivotal phase 3 clinical trial at the time of the acquisition.
In August, seladelpar was granted accelerated approval by the US FDA under the brand name Livdelzi. Later in the year, in December, the European Medicines Agency adopted a positive opinion on the conditional marketing authorization of seladelpar, with a final decision expected later this year.
RayzeBio
Buyer: Bristol Myers Squibb
Deal value: $4.1 billion
Completion date: February 26
Over the past year, the radiopharmaceuticals space has seen a growing interest from big pharma, with multiple large acquisitions by the likes of Eli Lilly and Novartis. Bristol Myers Squibb’s acquisition of RayzeBio has been the largest in the space so far, granting it access to the company’s pipeline of radiopharmaceutical therapeutics.
RayzeBio’s lead programme, RYZ101, is designed to target the somatostatin receptor 2 (SSTR2), which is overexpressed in certain forms of cancer. At the time of the acquisition, RayzeBio had started enrolling patients in a phase 3 trial to evaluate RYZ101 in patients with SSTR-positive gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (GEP-NETs).
Carmot Therapeutics
Buyer: Roche
Deal value: $3.6 billion
Completion date: January 29
The acquisition of Carmot Therapeutics was a strategic move by Roche to enter the GLP-1 space, which has been massively growing in recent years following the success of Novo’s Ozempic in the treatment of obesity and diabetes. The deal gave Roche control over three clinical-stage GLP-1 drugs in Carmot’s pipeline.
Following the acquisition deal, Roche reported positive phase 1 preliminary data from one of the three drug candidates, a once-daily oral formulation of an oral GLP-1 agonist intended for weight loss. The results showed one of the highest rates of weight loss achieved so far by any oral drugs currently in the clinical pipeline.
Morphic Therapeutics
Buyer: Eli Lilly
Deal value: $3.2 billion
Completion date: August 16
With Morphic’s acquisition, Eli Lilly gained hold of a portfolio of oral integrin therapies, including a lead program in the phase 2-stage for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The drug candidate has joined Lilly’s existing portfolio of IBD treatments, including Omvoh (mirikizumab-mrkz), which received approval in January this year.
Morphic’s lead asset was originally positioned as an α4β7 integrin inhibitor with potential to contend with Takeda’s antibody drug Entyvio (vedolizumab) as an oral alternative. While the drug didn’t show superiority over Entyvio in a phase 2a trial, Lilly still showed interest in the drug candidate for the development of combination treatments.
EyeBio
Buyer: Merck & Co.
Deal value: $3 billion
Completion date: July 12
Merck’s acquisition of New York City-based EyeBio has given the big pharma a portfolio of drug candidates for the treatment of eye diseases. Merck had been an investor in EyeBi since 2022, when its venture fund arm took part in the young company’s series A fundraise.
Not long after the acquisition deal was closed, Merck and EyeBio announced the start of a phase 2b/3 clinical trial for what was previously EyeBio’s lead asset, Restoret. This drug candidate is a tetravalent, trispecific antibody with potential as a first-in-class treatment for diabetic macular edema (DME), a condition on the rise given the growing incidence of diabetes.
