The road to Am­i­cus Ther­a­peu­tics’ $4.8 bil­lion ex­it to Bio­Marin last month in­clud­ed a pre­vi­ous­ly undis­closed ac­qui­si­tion of­fer from an­oth­er bio­phar­ma, qui­et din­ners be­tween CEOs and a months-long push to set­tle a le­gal dis­pute.

The de­tails are in­clud­ed in a new reg­u­la­to­ry doc­u­ment that out­lines the deal's his­to­ry and the run-up to the even­tu­al $ 14.50-a-share price for the Prince­ton, NJ-based biotech. Am­i­cus had been con­sid­er­ing strate­gic al­ter­na­tives since at least 2013, when it en­gaged Gold­man Sachs to look at po­ten­tial deals, ac­cord­ing to the Wednes­day night SEC fil­ing.

In March 2025, the 23-year-old rare dis­ease drug­mak­er be­gan dis­cussing the po­ten­tial to in-li­cense a prod­uct can­di­date from a com­mer­cial-stage bio­phar­ma — iden­ti­fied on­ly as Par­ty A — as a way to bol­ster its own port­fo­lio. By June, those talks had pro­gressed in­to Par­ty A's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer ex­press­ing in­ter­est in ac­quir­ing Am­i­cus for $8.50 a share.

Since its 2019 found­ing, Corx­el Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals has evolved from fo­cus­ing on the Chi­na mar­ket to eye­ing the world.

The bio­phar­ma, found­ed in Shang­hai but now head­quar­tered in New Jer­sey, has raised as much as $287 mil­lion in a Se­ries D1 round, the com­pa­ny said Thurs­day. The cash will help ad­vance its lead drug pro­gram, a GLP-1 pill ini­tial­ly de­vel­oped by the Chi­na biotech Vin­cen­t­age. Corx­el ac­quired ex-Chi­na rights to that pro­gram in 2024 and plans to launch a sec­ond US-based Phase 2 study this year.

In re­sponse to ques­tions by End­points News, Corx­el would­n't say how much of the $287 mil­lion may be con­tin­gent on achiev­ing cer­tain mile­stones, oth­er than that a "sig­nif­i­cant ma­jor­i­ty has been closed."

Cor­cept Ther­a­peu­tics said its ex­per­i­men­tal drug cut the risk of death by 35% for pa­tients with a chal­leng­ing form of ovar­i­an can­cer when added on top of chemother­a­py, notch­ing an im­por­tant win af­ter the Cal­i­for­nia biotech faced an FDA re­jec­tion of its drug in a dif­fer­ent dis­ease.

In re­sults an­nounced Thurs­day morn­ing, Cor­cept re­port­ed that plat­inum-re­sis­tant ovar­i­an can­cer pa­tients who re­ceived its drug rela­co­ri­lant on top of chemother­a­py lived for a me­di­an of 16 months. That’s com­pared to 11.9 months for pa­tients who re­ceived chemother­a­py alone as part of the Phase 3 ROSEL­LA study. The dif­fer­ence was sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant, trans­lat­ing to a p-val­ue of 0.0004 and meet­ing its sec­ond pri­ma­ry end­point in the tri­al.

Janux Ther­a­peu­tics has found a new part­ner.

The San Diego-based biotech is team­ing up with Bris­tol My­ers Squibb on a sol­id tu­mor pro­gram, but the tar­get is not yet dis­closed. Bris­tol My­ers will pay $50 mil­lion in up­front and near-term cash, and could be on the hook for about $800 mil­lion more in mile­stones.

The pro­gram in­volved in the deal is still pre­clin­i­cal. Janux will han­dle all de­vel­op­ment up to the IND stage, af­ter which Bris­tol My­ers will take the lead. Janux, how­ev­er, will al­so re­main “ac­tive­ly in­volved” through Phase 1 stud­ies, ac­cord­ing to a Thurs­day re­lease.