Eli Lilly, striving to outpace Novo Nordisk, dominated the dealmaking scene in 2023 by executing six acquisitions. Although Pfizer, BMS and AbbVie sealed the largest M&A deals of the year, they did not lead in terms of volume.

Priya Singhal, head of development, spoke with Scrip about the company’s R&D restructuring, readouts coming from the culled pipeline and how Biogen is thinking about adding to it in the future.

Private Company Edition: Publicly held Ascendis outsourced its preclinical AMD program to private Eyconis. Also, Innovation Endeavors revealed a new $630m VC fund and Mirae raised $50m for its first life science fund, while Accent, Comanche and Tr1X each brought in $75m rounds.

New head of research Jane Grogan comes to Biogen from start-ups Graphite Bio and ArsenalBio, and previously held leadership positions in autoimmune and oncology R&D at Genentech.