Behind the Headlines Episode 11–GLP-1 Patent Expiry, Recent Acquisitions, and Indirect Costs Capping

Behind the Headlines is a bi-weekly panel discussion examining the latest trends, readouts, and other factors that drive pharmaceutical news and innovation. Each episode features consultants, venture capitalists, scientists, patient advocates, and journalists discussing the prior weeks’ top news while seeking to highlight the more enduring lessons that hide behind the headlines.

In episode 11, Benjamin McLeod, founder of Convey BIO, Abhi Naravane, PhD, MBA, partner, PA Consulting, and Marianna Tcherpakov, PhD, director Business Development, CMC Services, Frontage Laboratories, discussed advertisements for GLP-1s shown during Super Bowl LIX, several large deals in the wake of the 2025 JP Morgan Health Care Conference, right sizing of the government under the Trump administration, the move toward capping National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant indirect costs at 15%, and a couple of interesting new companies that came onto our radar last week.

The panel takes a looks at Bain Capital’s acquisition of Mitsubishi Tanabe, where Japan’s supply of weight loss drugs seems a prime motivation (1), and of a similar scale in terms of overall dollar value, Novartis’ reabsorption of Anthos Therapeutics from Blackstone Life Sciences for an initial almost $1 billion upfront payment in a deal potentially worth up to $3.1 billion. The deal brings with it Anthos’ abelacimab, a novel factor XI inhibitor for stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation patients and blood clot prevention in cancer patients, which is in clinical trials (2).

Causing much conversation and exchange of strong opinion is the Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Grants Policy Statement: Indirect Cost Rates document issued by NIH on Feb. 7, 2025, which caps NIH grant indirect costs at 15%. The panel was divided, some seeing this as being realistically in line with the rest of society, while others believe it is off-target in terms of creating more downstream harm than good (3).

To round out the conversation, two new interesting companies noticed at the Precision Medicine World Conference were pointed to as holding promising new approaches. Aikium has a platform that enables Yotta-scale (10²⁴) machine learning on massive libraries by combining the world’s only artificial intelligence-driven trillion-protein messenger RNA display for large proteins and patented generative AI based on protein language models (4). Promise BIO explores a broad range of the post-translational modification landscape, “by integrating chemical knowledge, statistics, and advanced algorithms to address the computational burden while ensuring no biologically-relevant factors are overlooked” (5).

References

1. Brain Capital. Bain Capital to Acquire Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation. Press Release. Feb. 7, 2025. https://www.baincapital.com/news/bain-capital-acquire-mitsubishi-tanabe-pharma-corporation
2. Anthos Therapeutics. Blackstone Life Sciences and Anthos Therapeutics Announce Agreement for Anthos to be Acquired by Novartis for up to $3.1 billion. Press Release. Feb 11, 2025. https://anthostherapeutics.com/press-release/anthos_2025-02-11_release/
3. NIH. Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Grants Policy Statement: Indirect Cost Rates. NIH Notice, NOT-OD-25-068. Feb. 7, 2025. https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-068.html
4. Spivey, C. Aikium's AI-Driven mRNA Engine Looks to Address Undruggable Disordered Proteins. BioPharm International.com. Feb. 10, 2025. https://www.biopharminternational.com/view/aikium-ai-driven-mrna-engine-looks-to-address-undruggable-disordered-proteins
5. Promise Bio. Promise.bio (accessed Feb. 18, 2025). https://www.promise.bio/