A pair of in­vestors will ac­quire blue­bird bio in a deal worth on­ly $29 mil­lion up­front af­ter the gene ther­a­py mak­er ran out of time and op­tions.

The com­pa­ny has strug­gled fi­nan­cial­ly even as it launched the sick­le cell gene ther­a­py Lyf­ge­nia, which was ap­proved in late 2023. Blue­bird bio said Fri­day that the deal with Car­lyle and SK Cap­i­tal Part­ners was the “on­ly vi­able so­lu­tion to gen­er­ate val­ue for stock­hold­ers.”

In the past year, blue­bird has laid off staff, cut costs and had to re­work a loan af­ter miss­ing cer­tain mile­stones in Lyf­ge­nia’s launch that put its run­way in jeop­ardy.

As he was test­ing new an­tivi­rals to halt a fu­ture pan­dem­ic, John Chodera en­coun­tered an un­like­ly set of new prob­lems that ul­ti­mate­ly helped lead to his new job.

The com­pu­ta­tion­al chemist won a $68 mil­lion grant in 2022 from the Na­tion­al In­sti­tutes of Health to help lead a five-year ef­fort to de­vel­op new an­tivi­rals. That work end­ed pre­ma­ture­ly when Con­gress de­cid­ed in 2023 to ef­fec­tive­ly aban­don that ini­tia­tive.

“We found out a five-year pro­gram to dis­cov­er drugs was re­al­ly go­ing to be a three-year halfway bridge to nowhere,” Chodera said in an in­ter­view. “If you give up halfway across the riv­er, you don’t get a use­ful bridge with half the ca­pac­i­ty. You don’t get any­thing use­ful at all, un­for­tu­nate­ly.”

Eli Lil­ly has amassed a stock­pile of soon-to-be-launched drugs and re­lat­ed ma­te­ri­als, pri­mar­i­ly its oral GLP-1 can­di­date or­for­glipron, worth more than half a bil­lion dol­lars. Or­for­glipron will be ready to roll out as soon as it se­cures reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval, which could come in 2026.

“When we be­lieve that fu­ture com­mer­cial­iza­tion is prob­a­ble and the fu­ture eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit is ex­pect­ed to be re­al­ized, we cap­i­tal­ize pre-launch in­ven­to­ry pri­or to reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval,” Lil­ly said in its 2024 an­nu­al re­port SEC fil­ing, made pub­lic on Wednes­day.

The mag­ni­tude of Lil­ly’s $548 mil­lion stock­pile im­plies the com­pa­ny can make rough­ly $10 bil­lion in fu­ture sales, Ever­core ISI an­a­lyst Umer Raf­fat wrote in a re­port on Thurs­day. He added that Lil­ly will “in­evitably” build more in­ven­to­ry this year.

Plus, news about MeiraGTx, Hookipa and Pool­beg Phar­ma:

A pair of $500M share buy­backs: Ex­elix­is and Neu­ro­crine Bio­sciences each laid out plans to buy back half a bil­lion dol­lars worth of their shares. The Cal­i­for­nia drug­mak­ers are not new to the share re­pur­chase trend. Neu­ro­crine com­plet­ed a $300 mil­lion pro­gram ear­li­er this month, and Ex­elix­is is cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing an ear­li­er an­nounced $500 mil­lion pro­gram. — Kyle LaHu­cik

Cosette Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals buys Mayne Phar­ma Group: The rough­ly $430 mil­lion ac­qui­si­tion is ex­pect­ed to close in the sec­ond quar­ter. The deal bol­sters Cosette’s der­ma­tol­ogy and women’s health units and brings its to­tal num­ber of brand­ed prod­ucts to 12. Cosette is known for mar­ket­ing Vyleesi, a treat­ment for low sex­u­al de­sire in women. — Ay­isha Shar­ma