Novartis has signed an agreement and plan of merger to acquire AveXis, a clinical-stage gene-therapy company, for $8.7 billion. AveXis has several ongoing clinical studies for therapies treating spinal muscular atrophy, an inherited neurodegenerative disease. Read More

Amgen plans to build a new biomanufacturing plant at its campus in West Greenwich, Rhode Island. In January 2018, Amgen committed up to $300 million to build a new US manufacturing plant. Read More

Sanofi is investing EUR 350 million ($431 million) to construct a new vaccine-manufacturing facility at the Sanofi Pasteur headquarters in Toronto, Ontario. The facility will allow Sanofi Pasteur, its global vaccines business unit, to meet demand of a five-component acellular pertussis antigen. Read More

Boehringer Ingelheim and OSE Immunotherapeutics, a French biopharmaceutical company developing immunotherapies, have agreed to jointly develop OSE-172, a signal regulatory protein (SIRP)-alpha antagonist targeting myeloid lineage cells in a deal worth up to more than $1.3 billion. Read More

Lonza has opened a new 300,000-square-foot dedicated cell-and-gene-therapy manufacturing facility in Houston, Texas. Lonza Houston will serve as a center of excellence for cell-and-gene-therapy process development from concept through preclinical, clinical, and commercialization. Read More

Roche has completed its acquisition of Flatiron Health, a healthcare technology and services company focused on oncology, for $1.9 billion. Roche had previously owned a 12.6% stake in the company and now has acquired the full company. Read More

Celltrion, an Incheon, South Korea-based life-sciences company, has received Complete Response Letters from the FDA regarding the company’s biologics license applications for proposed biosimilars of Roche’s Rituxan (rituximab) and Herceptin (trastuzumab), two of Roche’s top-selling drugs. Read More

Alexion Pharmaceuticals has agreed to acquire Wilson Therapeutics, a Stockholm, Sweden-headquartered biopharmaceutical company that develops therapies for patients with rare copper-mediated disorders, for $855 million. Read More

Pfizer has decided to relocate its New York City headquarters to a new building in the city. The company signed a 20-year lease for The Spiral, an office tower being built at Hudson Yards of Manhattan. Pfizer expects to begin moving employees there in 2022. Read More

Ferring Pharmaceuticals, a Saint-Prex, Switzerland-headquartered biopharmaceutical company, has agreed to acquire Rebiotix, a Roseville, Minnesota-headquartered clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing treatments involving the human microbiome. Read More