The economics of health and life sciences: drugs and biotech, health systems and how they are paid for.
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In pharmaceutical M&A, the most expensive mistake is paying a premium for a future that clinical trials may never deliver - and three years on, Seagen's pipeline is testing that thesis.
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Anthropic's Claude has identified a previously uncharacterised biological system. For biotech investors, the real breakthrough could be AI making the earliest stage of drug discovery much cheaper.
Britain's healthcare crisis is proving lucrative. As the NHS waiting list persists, investors are paying £1bn to bet on the future of private hospitals.
Three deaths have paused eight Novartis trials and frozen enrolment at Bristol Myers Squibb - turning autoimmune CAR-T from a clinical question into a valuation problem for everyone who has already bought in.
Merck and Moderna's personalised melanoma vaccine has cleared Phase 3 and sent Moderna's shares to a record session. The harder question is whether a treatment built one patient at a time can ever be delivered at scale.
Big Pharma is acquiring earlier and accepting greater scientific risk for unproven drugs. The driver is not confidence in the science but the fear of a rival securing the next blockbuster first, as a $300bn patent cliff bears down on the industry.
A $200 million upfront payment, with milestones potentially taking the deal's total value to $1.9 billion, gives AstraZeneca exclusive rights to develop and commercialise an experimental COPD treatment outside China. More importantly, it highlights a broader shift in how Big Pharma is sourcing innovation.
Vertex's $10 billion acquisition of Crinetics is about far more than adding another drug to its portfolio. It is a strategic bet on an endocrinology platform that could fuel the company's next phase of growth.
As NHS waiting lists for autism assessments pass 200,000, private capital is flowing into neurodiversity services – forcing the question of whether profit and patient care can ever be aligned.
A single FDA reversal sent Regenxbio's shares soaring and reignited optimism across gene therapy - but one favourable decision cannot solve the commercial challenges that pushed the industry into crisis.
Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have proven GLP-1 drugs can deliver surgery-level weight loss - but with patients regaining much of it after stopping, the market's real value may depend on long-term adherence rather than who wins on efficacy.
As AI clouds software valuations, private equity is pivoting towards healthcare – a sector whose demand is underpinned by demographics and disease burden that can be forecasted decades ahead.