Gilead Sci­ences has ded­i­cat­ed around $11 bil­lion so far this year to three ac­qui­si­tions meant to bol­ster its pipelines in can­cer and im­munol­o­gy. The phar­ma com­pa­ny, once crit­i­cized for mak­ing bad deals, hopes it can suc­ceed this time in sub­stan­tial­ly di­ver­si­fy­ing from HIV.

Wall Street an­a­lysts ap­pear to be­lieve in the pur­chas­es. “We are ex­cit­ed by Gilead’s re­cent string of deals,” TD Cowen an­a­lyst Tyler Van Bu­ren wrote Wednes­day morn­ing.

Now, the com­pa­ny has to show that its bets will pay off.

The back-to-back ac­qui­si­tions do “not re­flect any change in the con­fi­dence we have in our ex­ist­ing clin­i­cal pipeline, nor any change in our phi­los­o­phy re­gard­ing M&A,” Gilead CEO Dan O’Day said on a call Tues­day evening. “Rather, it sim­ply re­flects the fact that three com­pa­nies met our high bar in quick suc­ces­sion.”

A start­up de­vel­op­ing a one-time treat­ment that is in­tend­ed to rewind the clock on dy­ing cells an­nounced a ma­jor in­flux of fund­ing.

Life Bio­sciences, a start­up co-found­ed by Har­vard bi­ol­o­gist David Sin­clair, has raised an $80 mil­lion Se­ries D fi­nanc­ing, the com­pa­ny an­nounced Wednes­day. The mon­ey will sup­port a Phase 1 tri­al of a gene ther­a­py in two forms of vi­sion loss and fund pre­clin­i­cal stud­ies us­ing a sim­i­lar ther­a­py to re­ju­ve­nate cells in oth­er parts of the body.

The tri­al is the first ma­jor test of the hy­poth­e­sis that ag­ing is caused by a loss of epi­ge­net­ic in­for­ma­tion — the chem­i­cal mark­ers atop DNA that con­trol how the un­der­ly­ing ge­net­ic code is used. The ther­a­py is based on three pro­teins that should help re­set the epi­ge­net­ic code to a younger state, but stop short of a com­plete wipe, which bi­ol­o­gists be­lieve could be dan­ger­ous.

Plus, news about No­vavax, Re­Al­ta and AtaiBeck­ley:

Mer­ck ad­justs Chi­na vac­cine sup­ply deal: The com­pa­ny and its dis­tri­b­u­tion part­ner Zhifei have tweaked their agree­ment as Mer­ck con­tin­ues to grap­ple with low­er de­mand for its HPV vac­cine Gar­dasil in Chi­na. The new deal no longer spec­i­fies a base­line pro­cure­ment vol­ume for Mer­ck’s vac­cines, but in­stead al­lows the com­pa­nies to de­ter­mine sup­ply plans “based on an­tic­i­pat­ed mar­ket de­mand and ac­tu­al vac­ci­na­tion up­take,” ac­cord­ing to a trans­lat­ed reg­u­la­to­ry fil­ing from Zhifei. Mer­ck sup­plies three prod­ucts to Zhifei: Gar­dasil, its ro­tavirus vac­cine Ro­taTeq, and the pneu­mo­coc­cal vac­cine Pneu­movax 23. — Nicole De­Feud­is

A dozen or so Eu­ro­pean drug de­vel­op­ment star­tups might soon get a ma­jor lift from Jeito Cap­i­tal.

The Paris-based firm closed its sec­ond fund at $1.2 bil­lion, or more than €1 bil­lion, Jeito said Wednes­day. The cap­i­tal pool is near­ly dou­ble the fir­m's $630 mil­lion de­but fund, which had a fi­nal close in Sep­tem­ber 2021.

The 35-per­son firm has had a cou­ple of siz­able ex­its so far from that first fund: Bio­gen bought im­munol­o­gy start­up HI-Bio, and Mer­ck ac­quired oph­thal­mol­o­gy play­er Eye­Bio.

With a ma­jor ramp-up for its sopho­more fund, Jeito will be able to write much larg­er checks for its clin­i­cal-stage ben­e­fi­cia­ries. The firm plans to dole out up to $150 mil­lion per port­fo­lio com­pa­ny as com­pared to a rough­ly $100 mil­lion cap in the first fund, Jeito founder and CEO Rafaèle Tord­j­man said in an in­ter­view with End­points News.