IntellaTurn, LLC

• The San Francisco–based frontier AI lab has acquired Coefficient Bio, a stealth New York-based biotech AI startup, in a stock deal valued at just over $400 million.

• The deal brings a team of fewer than 10 people, most of them former Genentech computational biology researchers, into Anthropic’s healthcare and life sciences division.

• Anthropic’s $380 billion post-money valuation was set in its February Series G.

• Until now, the company’s approach has largely centered on adapting its general-purpose Claude models for scientific workflows through connectors, integrations and enterprise partnerships. The company announced Claude for Life Sciences last October.

With Coefficient Bio, Anthropic is absorbing a team that was building biology-specific AI models from the ground up, with ambitions the startup described as nothing less than “artificial superintelligence for science.”

• Gilead Sciences will acquire German biotechnology startup Tubulis in a potentially $5 billion deal that expands the company’s growing pipeline of cancer drugs.

• Per the deal terms, Gilead will pay $3.15 billion upfront for Tubulis and could shell out another $1.85 billion if certain unspecified milestones are met.

• The deal hands Gilead a technology for making next-generation antibody-drug conjugates along with two products, TUB-040 and TUB-030, in clinical testing against different tumor types.

• The acquisition is the latest in a series of company buyouts Gilead, historically known for its HIV drugs, has struck to build up its cancer portfolio. (BioPharma Dive)

• Neurocrine Biosciences is expanding its scope in rare endocrine disorders through the $2.9 billion acquisition of Soleno Therapeutics, a company that commercialized the first approved drug for a rare genetic condition that leads to ravenous hunger.

• The Soleno drug, Vykat XR, won its FDA approval in Prader-Willi syndrome a little more than a year ago.

• Since its launch, the once-daily pill has seen rapid market uptake, giving San Diego-based Neurocrine confidence that the product can complement its portfolio, contributing to growth of a revenue base includes one blockbuster drug and is now adding a product also projected to reach blockbuster status. (MedCity News)

• Eli Lilly may not have discovered orexins, but the pharma’s latest acquisition marks increasing momentum for a drug class that’s maturing after years of fine-tuning.

• The big question on the minds of Wall Street is whether orexins’ potential is fully known.

• Lilly announced that it was buying Centessa Pharmaceuticals for $6.3 billion upfront, its largest acquisition since it bought Loxo Oncology in 2019, should the deal close.

• The move gives Lilly access to a pipeline of orexin receptor 2 agonists, primarily in development to treat sleep disorders like narcolepsy.

• But what if narcolepsy is just scratching the surface? Interviews with Wall Street analysts suggest that’s a possibility, and with Lilly in control, a lot more money could be poured into widening the drugs’ development scope — specifically, testing whether they broadly help with focus or fatigue. (Endpoints)

• At the start of 2026, there were 22,940 drug candidates in development, a 3.92% decrease from that same reference point in 2025, when there were 23,875 investigational molecules in the pipeline, according to Citeline’s annual Pharma R&D report.

• Taking these changes into account, the firm said that “in reality, the overall pipeline size has probably been fairly flat over the past few years.”

• And even if the total number of drugs in development did drop, Citeline doesn’t appear overly concerned about what that could mean for the industry’s future.

“As long as the industry is still producing the goods, there’s nothing to worry about here,” the firm wrote. “A smaller overall pipeline doesn’t necessarily mean pharma is barking up the wrong tree.”

• This includes oncology and rare diseases, which typically account for the vast majority of drug candidates.

• Cancer programs dropped from 9,476 in 2025 to 9,036 in 2026, while the rare disease pipeline shrunk from 7,721 to 7,618.

• The dip in the overall pipeline size, according to Citeline’s data, was driven by a sharp drop in the number of preclinical assets.

• Similarly, the size of Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3 pipelines, as well as the total amount of drugs launched, had increased by the start of the year.

• Similar to cholesterol, but not quite the same, and also the lookalike of a clot-busting protein, the molecule still vexes researchers many decades later.

• It also might just revolutionize cardiovascular medicine as we know it.

• Elevated Lp(a) is a known risk factor for a range of bad cardiac outcomes, from heart attacks and strokes to heart valve malfunctions. And the scale of the problem is almost too large to fathom: an estimated 20% of the global population has Lp(a) levels that put them at risk.

• Guidelines from a suite of expert groups, led by the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association, now recommend that everyone have their Lp(a) levels tested at least once in their life.

• But Lp(a)’s genetic control, as well as its manufacturing site in the liver, make it a prime candidate for targeting by small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs).

• Should the Lp(a)-lowering candidates now in the clinic reach their full potential, they could surpass statins—the most prescribed medications in the world—in their use, multiple experts said.

• Should pelacarsen’s phase 3 Horizon trial succeed, it would trigger a tidal wave of interest in the Lp(a) field, experts agreed.

• But while pelacarsen could be approved as early as next year, there would still be a long way to go before the Lp(a) drug class as a whole ascends to the mega-blockbuster level of statins.