Thousands of investors, Wall Street analysts, execs, and of course, journalists, converged on San Francisco last week for the biggest healthcare investor event of the year - the $4.
It can be overwhelming, not to mention $4. This year, more than 9,000 people signed up, and 485-plus companies were on the schedule to present.
If you had a hard time keeping up, we've got you covered. Here's all of the most important news you might have missed while you were conferencing last week.
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Pairing off
The biggest news of the week was Eli Lilly's $4 Loxo Oncology, announced on Monday morning.
That deal followed the massive Bristol-Myers Squibb bid >$4for Celgene, announced the week before.
With drugmakers flush with cash, top executives at firms like Merck and Gilead signaled in presentations at the event that there may be $4.
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Partnering up
Sometimes, it's better to keep things casual. Lots of companies announced new partnerships last week. Here are some of the highlights:
- Civica Rx, the nonprofit that's bringing hospitals together to make their own generic drugs, $4.
- The health clinic startup One Medical is$4 with a big Seattle health system to expand the kinds of care it can provide to patients.
- Sanofi and Regeneron announced that they restructured their $4.
- Gilead struck $4 with the Korean pharma company Yuhan to work on a drug for patients with the liver disease NASH.
Pfizer, meanwhile, has been using its Pfizer Ventures arm and a partnership with Bain Capital to pursue brain research, after the drugmaker itself pulled back from the field last year. $4
Drug Developments
The conference can be a prime time for companies to announce clinical trial results for their drugs. And we'll include some other medical-treatment developments here too:
- Sage Therapeutics had perhaps the $4. The company's stock surged 43% after it published data showing a drug its developing can help relieve symptoms of postpartum depressions.
- Pear Therapeutics $4 for a prescription app that helps treat opioid use disorder.
- Digital health is heating up. Omada Health, which long focused on diseases like diabetes and obesity, is $4 for psychological issues such as depression and anxiety.
- Invitae is going direct-to-consumer. The genetic testing company said it'll $4, though a clinician will still be involved to help interpret the results.
Catching Up
It's always good to get the latest news from old friends. My favorite update came from CVS Health, which laid out how (after its merger with health insurer Aetna), the company $4.
We also caught up with Jessica Mega at Verily, who $4 on what the Alphabet-linked life sciences company is up to, after it just raised a fresh $1 billion.
And Jordge Conde, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, explained why he's $4.
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