Pfizer has reached a deal to buy Global Blood Therapeutics for $5.4bn, gaining the sickle cell therapy Oxbryta and building on efforts to reach underserved patient groups.

Inflation, rising interest rates, market volatility, violence in Ukraine and a persistent pandemic created a chaotic macroenvironment for doing business. Pharma appears poised to grow, nonetheless.

ARCH closed a $3bn VC fund to end the month of June while in the same week six public biopharma firms said they are cutting jobs. Even so, some publicly traded companies have been able to launch sizeable offerings, including a $450m note sale by Cytokinetics and Xenon’s $250m follow-on. 

Panel expects to review five respiratory syncytial virus vaccines and vote on one or two of them in June 2023 and others four months later. Sanofi presents results of three clinical trials of its monoclonal antibody nirsevimab, which is on track to be the second RSV prophylaxis for infants.