Lon­za agreed to sell its cap­sules and health in­gre­di­ents busi­ness to a UK-based in­vest­ment firm for $2.2 bil­lion up­front.

The sep­a­ra­tion has been a long time com­ing for Lon­za, which first di­vulged plans to di­vest the unit in De­cem­ber 2024. At the time, CEO Wolf­gang Wien­and was about six months in­to his role and said the Swiss man­u­fac­tur­er is “not the best own­er any­more" for CHI.

In a news re­lease Fri­day, Lon­za called the deal the “last and most sig­nif­i­cant step” to com­plete its trans­for­ma­tion in­to a “pure-play CD­MO.” The deal with Lone Star Funds is ex­pect­ed to close in this year's sec­ond half.

→ Anne-Vir­ginie Eggi­mann an­nounced on LinkedIn that she has jumped to Eli Lil­ly as chief de­vel­op­ment of­fi­cer of its re­gen­er­a­tive med­i­cine busi­ness. Eggi­mann spent the last three and a half years as chief reg­u­la­to­ry of­fi­cer at Flag­ship’s gene writ­ing start­up Tessera Ther­a­peu­tics, which said in Jan­u­ary that it would lay off about 90 em­ploy­ees. She was al­so a reg­u­la­to­ry ex­ec at blue­bird bio and joined Tessera just days af­ter the FDA ap­proved blue­bird’s gene ther­a­py Zyn­te­glo for trans­fu­sion-de­pen­dent be­ta tha­lassemia.

Pfiz­er was a late ar­rival to the obe­si­ty gold rush, but it just hit its first seam.

The GLP-1 shot, li­censed from Hangzhou-based drug­mak­er Sci­wind Bio­sciences just a lit­tle over a week ago, was ap­proved in Chi­na for weight man­age­ment, Sci­wind said Fri­day, mak­ing it Pfiz­er’s first ap­proved obe­si­ty med­i­cine.

In an atyp­i­cal arrange­ment be­tween US and Chi­nese com­pa­nies, Pfiz­er did not take ex-Chi­na rights to Sci­wind’s drug. In­stead, it took ex­clu­sive sales rights for the prod­uct in main­land Chi­na it­self, agree­ing to pay a to­tal of $495 mil­lion. Sci­wind is still re­spon­si­ble for any fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of the shot, as well as reg­is­tra­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing and sup­ply.

Servi­er plans to pay $2.5 bil­lion to ac­quire Day One Bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in a deal that will give it ac­cess to rare on­col­o­gy med­i­cines, in­clud­ing the mar­ket­ed brain tu­mor treat­ment Ojem­da.

The French phar­ma said on Fri­day it will pay $21.50 a share DAWN in cash, mark­ing a 68% pre­mi­um over Day One's Thurs­day clos­ing price. The Cal­i­for­nia biotech went pub­lic in May 2021 at $16 a pop. The deal is slat­ed to close in the sec­ond quar­ter and adds to a string of as­sets that Servi­er has brought in over the past six months.

The deal marks at least the 10th bio­phar­ma ac­qui­si­tion so far this year, ac­cord­ing to an End­points News track­er. Eli Lil­ly, GSK and Gilead have each forged multi­bil­lion-dol­lar deals this year as they look to ex­pand their pipeline prowess for years to come.