Olix Pharmaceuticals Inc. walked the talk in realizing a new $630 million licensing deal with Eli Lilly and Co. for its cardiovascular and metabolic disease asset, OLX-702A (OLX-75016), rallying stock by 30% after it had largely recovered from a terminated deal with France’s Théa Open Innovation last year.

For the pharmaceutical industry caught in the crosshairs of a potential trade war, the consequences of U.S. tariffs on China or Europe remain largely speculative, although both would be detrimental, according to a Korea Biotechnology Industry Organization (KoreaBIO) issue briefing Feb. 7.

“This current administration is like nothing that we've seen before,” said a managing partner of a global venture capital firm who spoke to BioWorld on the condition of anonymity. “President Trump’s first term was bad,” he said, “but nobody knows what’s coming.” “This is truly nationalism at its worst, because he won on the campaign [largely] to protect American jobs, claiming that Americans have been unfairly treated.” And it's not just China, he said, but India and other countries will also likely be affected.

Kura Oncology Inc. and Kyowa Kirin Co. Ltd.’s selective oral menin inhibitor, ziftomenib, met the primary endpoints in the phase II registrational Komet-001 trial in patients with relapsed/refractory NPM1-mutant acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and Kura expects to submit its NDA to the U.S. FDA in the second quarter of 2025.

Chinese biotechs are increasingly seeking deals with multinational companies, and those deal structures are getting more creative. The “newco” deal structure is getting a lot of attention, but the barrier for entry is quite high for this type of deal, Morrison Foerster Shanghai Managing Partner Chuan Sun told BioWorld.

Japan’s drug pricing scheme has gotten more complicated, and pharma companies should brace themselves for annual price cuts. Industry has been pushing back against the annual price reductions to no avail, Ray Fujii, managing director of LEK’s San Francisco office told BioWorld. Although 2025 is a mid-year revision in Japan, and not a formal price revision year, the system for considering drug prices has gotten more confusing with a new formula for determining price cuts.

Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has approved CSL Ltd.’s Andembry (garadacimab) for preventing recurrent hereditary angioedema attacks, marking the first global approval for the drug that was discovered and developed in Australia by CSL scientists.

Inflammatory diseases specialist AB2 Bio Ltd. has signed a potential $686 million U.S. commercialization deal for its interleukin-18 neutralizing drug tadekinig. The agreement with Japanese pharma company Nippon Shinyaku Co. Ltd. includes an initial payment of $6 million, with a further $30 million due later this year.