Ever since Chris Viehbach­er ar­rived at Bio­gen in 2022, in­vestors have been won­der­ing how he planned to turn around the biotech.

On Tues­day, they got at least part of their an­swer. The com­pa­ny's $5.6 bil­lion deal for Apel­lis is the clear­est sig­nal yet for how Viehbach­er is po­si­tion­ing Bio­gen for growth af­ter the dis­ap­point­ing launch of its Alzheimer’s drug and con­tin­ued ques­tions about its pipeline.

The deal comes with two ap­proved drugs, most no­tably Em­paveli, a rare blood dis­or­der drug that was al­so ap­proved last year for a rare kid­ney dis­ease — and Bio­gen ex­ec­u­tives be­lieve this could be its next big mar­ket.

Eli Lil­ly is mak­ing its biggest ac­qui­si­tion in years, de­vot­ing part of its GLP-1 cash in­flux to buy Centes­sa Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and its ex­per­i­men­tal med­i­cines for sleep dis­or­ders and neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions.

The phar­ma gi­ant will de­vote $6.3 bil­lion up­front and up to $1.5 bil­lion in con­tin­gent val­ue rights to ac­quire Centes­sa and its orex­in re­cep­tor 2 (OX2R) ag­o­nists. The deal is for $38 per share $CN­TA up­front in cash. It al­so in­cludes mul­ti­ple CVRs up­on cer­tain reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals.

Centes­sa’s lead drug, called clemi­norex­ton (ORX750), is in Phase 2a test­ing for nar­colep­sy type 1, nar­colep­sy type 2 and id­io­path­ic hy­per­som­nia.

The ex­per­i­men­tal med­i­cine was ex­pect­ed to be­gin a reg­is­tra­tional tri­al in the first quar­ter, ac­cord­ing to a Feb­ru­ary cor­po­rate pre­sen­ta­tion. Oth­er OX2R ag­o­nists that could com­pete with it in­clude Take­da’s late-stage ove­porex­ton and Alk­er­mes’ mid-stage al­ixorex­ton. Centes­sa al­so has at least two oth­er OX2R ag­o­nists in ear­ly de­vel­op­ment.

All­tr­na, a start­up de­vel­op­ing a new class of RNA-based drugs where a sin­gle ther­a­py could po­ten­tial­ly be reused across many dif­fer­ent dis­eases, has re­ceived clear­ance to be­gin its first clin­i­cal tri­al, the com­pa­ny told End­points News in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view.

The Cam­bridge, MA-based com­pa­ny's ther­a­pies are based on trans­fer RNA, a nat­ur­al mol­e­cule that helps trans­late the ge­net­ic code in­to pro­teins. Some ge­net­ic dis­eases are caused by mu­ta­tions that in­ter­rupt that trans­la­tion process, re­sult­ing in an in­com­plete pro­tein. All­tr­na has de­vel­oped syn­thet­ic tR­NA mol­e­cules that in­ter­cept those ge­net­ic ty­pos and help the cell’s trans­la­tion ma­chin­ery fin­ish mak­ing the pro­tein.