Our partners share insights on the trends shaping dealmaking in the Life Sciences sector—and what to watch in the months ahead. September 2026 · Life Sciences Featuring insights from Ryan Murr, Sebastian Fain, and Branden Berns. DEAL ACTIVITY What’s driving deal activity in the sector right now? Murr: Life Sciences deal volume is up substantially,…
This article describes the current state-of-play with MFN and key deal drafting considerations. Life sciences dealmaking is running at a record pace — straight into a pricing regime that is still being written. According to Gibson Dunn’s July biopharma M&A survey, the first half of 2026 saw 13 announced acquisitions of public biopharma targets ranging…
In the first six months of 2026, acquirers announced 13 qualifying acquisitions of public biopharma targets worth $66.6 billion in upfront consideration. This survey examines that period and the surge within it: what is driving it, how the deals are structured, and what it means for the parties negotiating the next one. Focusing on the…
Contingent value rights have become a defining feature of biopharma M&A, appearing in under 10% of mid-cap public-target deals before 2019 but a quarter to a third of them in every year since 2023. They let a buyer pay less cash at signing while preserving upside for selling stockholders on a binary clinical, regulatory, or…
On August 3, 2026, the California Supreme Court held in Gilead Tenofovir Cases (Aug. 3, 2026, S283862) ___ Cal.5th ___ (slip opn.), that a drug manufacturer owes no duty of care to users of a non-defective drug when deciding whether and when to commercialize an allegedly safer alternative drug. The Court reached that conclusion on…
On February 18, 2026, FDA Commissioner Martin Makary and Vinay Prasad, then-Chief Medical and Scientific Officer and Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, published a landmark policy announcement in the New England Journal of Medicine that a single adequate and well-controlled pivotal trial — supplemented by confirmatory evidence — is now the…