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In aggregated financial terms, the top ten highest-value deals so

far in 2024 could be worth over $31 billion. Although the total for

the corresponding period in 2023 exceeded $53 billion, it included

a mammoth $22 billion agreement between Daiichi Sankyo and

Merck, which was one of the most substantial deals of the past

decade, making it difficult to draw direct comparisons between the

figures for the two years. The potential monetary value of each deal

in the 2024 list is more than $2 billion, and a couple of the deals

could reach at least double or even triple that. Although cardiovascular

disease and dementia feature among these agreements, cancer

is the most common focus, accounting for six of the top ten deals.

Protein drugs are a particular theme, as is access to early-stage

candidates and technology, despite the increased risks associated

with these phases of research and development (R&D). At the end

of April 2024, for example, pharmaceutical powerhouse Novartis

expanded its 2019 peptide-discovery collaboration with Japanese

drug discovery/biotech company PeptiDream in a deal potentially

worth $2.89 billion. PeptiDream’s proprietary Peptide Discovery

Platform System (PDPS) enables the generation of highly diverse

libraries of macrocyclic peptides for screening against biological

targets; hits are optimized and then developed into peptide and

small-molecule therapeutics or peptide‒drug conjugates. As well as

building a pipeline of peptide-based diagnostics and therapeutics,

PeptiDream also sells radiopharmaceuticals and radiodiagnostics

through its wholly owned subsidiary, PDRadiopharma.

www.nature.com/biopharmdeal