The buzz this morn­ing is that Sanofi $SNY is mov­ing ahead steadi­ly on work­ing out a deal to buy Acte­lion. And Bloomberg re­ports that the phar­ma gi­ant has brought out its fa­vorite M&A tool — the CVR, or con­tin­gent val­ue right shares — to get the job done with­out hand­ing over too large a pre­mi­um.

Sanofi ob­servers will well re­mem­ber that the CVR is what clinched the $20 bil­lion deal for Gen­zyme. But those CVRs are now trad­ing at 38 cents af­ter Sanofi, not known for a very ef­fec­tive in-house R&D group, failed to hit any of the big mile­stones it laid out for in­vestors. Orig­i­nal­ly val­ued at $5.58, or $3.8 bil­lion, the CVR {GCVRZ} was built around Lem­tra­da, which was ini­tial­ly re­ject­ed by the FDA, de­rail­ing the com­mer­cial­iza­tion time­line. And that re­jec­tion was fol­lowed up with a law­suit.

The drug was fi­nal­ly ap­proved in late 2014 and went on to post dis­ap­point­ing 2015 sales, fur­ther dam­ag­ing the CVR.

Jean-Paul Clozel

Nev­er­the­less, Bloomberg re­ports that a CVR may be just what Acte­lion CEO Jean-Paul Clozel needs to give up his well known pref­er­ence for in­de­pen­dence. Clozel has seen off sev­er­al would-be suit­ors and ac­tivist in­vest­ment groups push­ing a sale. J&J $JNJ was the last to go a few days ago, of­fi­cial­ly sign­ing out of the deal room but re­port­ed­ly keep­ing an eye on the progress Sanofi makes on a buy­out that could weigh in around $30 bil­lion.

One rea­son why Sanofi would pre­fer a CVR is that Clozel has been the com­pa­ny’s biggest pipeline fan. He is par­tic­u­lar­ly pumped about the MS drug pones­i­mod — a sphin­go­sine-1-phos­phate 1 re­cep­tor ag­o­nist — just as Gen­zyme’s Hen­ri Ter­meer was pumped about Lem­tra­da. Sanofi is al­so well past its $20 bil­lion self-im­posed lim­i­ta­tion on new ac­qui­si­tions, which will fur­ther add to the at­trac­tive­ness of a CVR. But af­ter los­ing Medi­va­tion to Pfiz­er, Sanofi CEO Olivi­er Brandi­court needs to pro­duce a deal to help ap­pease in­vestors as its di­a­betes fran­chise wanes.

Sanofi’s bleak CVR past, cur­rent R&D ef­fort — as dis­tinct from its col­lab­o­ra­tions with Re­gen­eron — and trou­bled fu­ture are like­ly to keep Clozel fo­cused on the cash. The phar­ma gi­ant’s promis­es on re­search and CVRs look pret­ty thin at this stage.

Tech­nol­o­gy is bleed­ing in­to health­care, and big phar­ma is rid­ing the wave. Sanofi $SNY ap­point­ed its first chief dig­i­tal of­fi­cer this Feb­ru­ary, fol­low­ing the foot­steps of its peers. By May, the French drug­mak­er and some of its big phar­ma com­pa­tri­ots joined forces with Google par­ent Al­pha­bet’s Ver­i­ly unit to aug­ment clin­i­cal tri­al re­search. On Tues­day, the Parisian com­pa­ny tied up with Google to ac­cess its cloud com­put­ing and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence tech to spur the de­vel­op­ment of new ther­a­pies.

While gene ther­a­py com­pa­nies re­joice as the sec­tor gains trac­tion with ap­provals and a flur­ry of M&A ac­tiv­i­ty, one play­er is feel­ing the heat.

Back in 2015, Voy­ager Ther­a­peu­tics joined forces with Sanofi Gen­zyme in a deal worth up to $845 mil­lion ($100 mil­lion up­front + a po­ten­tial $745 mil­lion in mile­stones) to co-de­vel­op gene ther­a­pies for se­vere cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem dis­or­ders. But two years lat­er, the French drug­mak­er re­treat­ed, elect­ing to not pick up the op­tion to work on Voy­ager’s Parkin­son’s dis­ease pro­gram. (Last year, the FDA dis­ap­point­ed Voy­ager, telling the com­pa­ny that it was not open to an ac­cel­er­at­ed fil­ing on the Parkin­son’s drug on the ba­sis of Phase II da­ta — in­stead re­quir­ing an ad­di­tion­al piv­otal study.)

A day af­ter Pfiz­er bought Ar­ray and its ap­proved can­cer com­bo, BeiGene and Pfiz­er spin­out Spring­Works have part­nered in launch­ing a new biotech that has an eye on the very same mar­ket the phar­ma gi­ant just paid bil­lions for. And they’re plan­ning on us­ing an ex-Pfiz­er drug to do it.

In a nut­shell, Chi­na’s BeiGene is toss­ing in a pre­clin­i­cal BRAF in­hibitor — BGB-3245, which cov­ers both V600 and non-V600 BRAF mu­ta­tions — for a big stake in a new, joint­ly con­trolled biotech called Map­Kure with Bain-backed Spring­Works.

In the in­creas­ing­ly crowd­ed check­point race, small cell lung can­cer has been a rare area where Roche, a sec­ond run­ner-up, has a lead over the en­trenched lead­ers Mer­ck and Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb. But Mer­ck is fi­nal­ly mak­ing some head­way in that di­rec­tion with the lat­est ap­proval for its PD-1 star.

The lat­est green light en­dors­es Keytru­da in the third-line treat­ment of metasta­t­ic SCLC, where it would be giv­en to pa­tients whose dis­ease ei­ther don’t re­spond to or re­lapse af­ter chemother­a­py, which would have fol­lowed at least one pri­or line of ther­a­py.