The unsettling impact that the Trump administration’s health care and tariff initiatives are having on M&A activity and financing is highlighted in a new survey of CEOs and investors, who say uncertainty related to the U.S. policy environment is the top challenge they face when it comes to executing deals.

Pfizer Inc. bounced back in a big way from a GLP-1 trip-up this spring by making known its plan to take over what Metsera Inc. CEO Whit Bernard has called the “scale-obsessed” obesity player that he steers. Pfizer has agreed to pay $47.50 each for all of Metsera’s outstanding shares.

Starpharma Holdings Ltd.’s stock shot up 73% on the news that it is outlicensing its dendrimer enhanced product drug delivery technology to Roche Holding AG subsidiary Genentech Inc. in a deal worth more than $569 million.

Mabwell Bioscience Co. Ltd. and Aditum Bio Management Co. LLC announced, in after-market hours Sept. 17, an agreement to forge a new company called Kalexo Bio Inc. and load the biotech with a preclinical dyslipidemia asset via a potential $1 billion global license deal.

Shape Therapeutics Inc. could bring in as much as $1.2 billion in a new option and license deal with Vectory Therapeutics BV. It’s another collaboration for both companies that are known for working with large and small pharmas. Vectory is getting the exclusive option to evaluate Shape’s brain-penetrating adeno-associated virus capsid, SHP-DB1, against three targets, including mHTT, TDP-43 for Huntington’s disease and phosphorylated tau for Alzheimer’s disease.

The dash for MASH is gaining momentum, with Roche AG acquiring 89bio Inc. and its phase III FGF21 analogue, pegozafermin, for treating metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, in a deal worth up to $3.5 billion. The Swiss pharma is to pay $14.50 per share, valuing San Francisco-based 89Bio at $2.4 billion, a premium of approximately 52% to 89bio’s 60-day average price on Sept. 17, 2025. Shares of 89bio (NASDAQ:ETNB) gained $6.88, or 85%, to close Sept. 18 at $14.96.

CSL Ltd. inked a potential $2.1 billion deal with Dutch biotech company Varmx BV to develop VMX-C001 as a new treatment to restore blood coagulation in patients taking a factor Xa inhibitor.

In its second deal with Novartis AG of the past 11 months, Monte Rosa Therapeutics Inc. is getting $120 million up front to collaborate on developing molecular glue degraders to treat immune-mediated diseases. The agreement could swell to $5.7 billion for Monte Rosa.

Biopharma dealmaking remained robust through August 2025, with total disclosed deal value reaching $185.28 billion for the first eight months of the year, the highest January-to-August total in BioWorld’s records, and up nearly 36% over the same period in 2024.

Countries in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region have an opportunity, or a time-limited “gap,” to become leaders on the global biotechnology stage, panelists at the Bio Asia 2025 conference said in Singapore Sept. 9.