Is Bris­tol My­ers Squibb ready to take on big deal­mak­ing again?

When CEO Chris Boern­er took over in late 2023, Bris­tol My­ers was in a dif­fi­cult po­si­tion. Its stock price BMY was down more than 25% that year, and sev­er­al of its top-sell­ing drugs were fac­ing up­com­ing patent cliffs and pric­ing pres­sure from Medicare ne­go­ti­a­tions.

BMS then un­der­went a sig­nif­i­cant “tran­si­tion pe­ri­od” that saw it lay off thou­sands of work­ers and prune over a dozen pipeline pro­grams.

Dur­ing Thurs­day’s first-quar­ter earn­ings call, Boern­er made his strongest com­ments yet that Bris­tol My­ers in­tends to be ac­tive at the deal­mak­ing ta­ble this year. He re­ferred to busi­ness de­vel­op­ment as the top “cap­i­tal al­lo­ca­tion pri­or­i­ty” for the com­pa­ny in 2025, say­ing it will fo­cus on “growth” op­por­tu­ni­ties from ac­qui­si­tions or part­ner­ships.

Ver­sant Ven­tures' biotech in­cu­ba­tion team has launched an­oth­er Swiss start­up, this time fo­cused on a pair of an­ti­bod­ies for au­toim­mune and in­flam­ma­to­ry dis­eases.

Gran­ite Bio broke cov­er on Thurs­day morn­ing af­ter rais­ing a $30 mil­lion Se­ries A from Ver­sant and No­var­tis' ven­ture arm in 2021 and a $70 mil­lion Se­ries B from For­bion and Sanofi's cor­po­rate ven­ture team in 2023.

The com­pa­ny has kept a low pro­file un­til now, new CEO Patrick Lous­tau said in an in­ter­view. Most re­cent­ly, he was the chief busi­ness of­fi­cer at Amolyt Phar­ma and helped or­ches­trate the hy­poparathy­roidism biotech's $1.05 bil­lion ex­it to As­traZeneca last year.

Gran­ite Bio is do­ing work in one of the most sought-af­ter ar­eas of drug de­vel­op­ment: in­flam­ma­to­ry and im­munol­o­gy dis­eases (I&I).

Plus, news about No­vo Hold­ings, Biox­odes and Tem­pus AI:

Dutch biotech rais­es $50M in seed fund­ing: Avidi­cure, which is de­vel­op­ing avid­i­ty en­gi­neered an­ti­bod­ies for can­cer, said it plans to use the fund­ing to move its lead prod­uct, AVC-S-101, in­to the clin­ic for sol­id tu­mors. The round, an­nounced Wednes­day, was led by EQT Life Sci­ences. Oth­er in­vestors in­clude Kur­ma Part­ners and Bio­Gen­er­a­tion Ven­tures. — Jaimy Lee

Flag­ship Pi­o­neer­ing launch­es new com­pa­ny: The com­pa­ny is called Etiome, which is work­ing on an AI plat­form to fore­cast dis­ease pro­gres­sion in pa­tients. Flag­ship is al­so giv­ing Etiome $50 mil­lion. — An­na Brown

No­vo Hold­ings, Dan­ish bank fund VC: No­vo Hold­ings and the Ex­port and In­vest­ment Fund of Den­mark are in­vest­ing €48 mil­lion in­to Health­Cap IX, a Swedish ven­ture fund. Health­Cap plans to use the fund­ing to open an of­fice at the BioIn­no­va­tion In­sti­tute in Copen­hagen as well as in­vest in start-ups. — An­na Brown

Roche and Sanofi said on Thurs­day morn­ing they have been run­ning sce­nar­ios on how US and oth­er tar­iffs could po­ten­tial­ly im­pact their re­spec­tive busi­ness­es. How­ev­er, while Roche has de­tailed spe­cif­ic moves, Sanofi has yet to do so.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s tar­iffs, and levies in re­sponse to them, will like­ly con­tin­ue to be a ma­jor talk­ing point dur­ing this quar­ter’s earn­ings sea­son. While coun­try-spe­cif­ic levies are on pause, the phar­ma in­dus­try is close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the force and time­lines of loom­ing