You can add Ab­b­Vie and Al­ler­gan’s $63 bil­lion merg­er to the list of plans po­ten­tial­ly dis­rupt­ed by Covid-19.

The Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion said that it may need to of­fer ex­ten­sions on cer­tain cas­es be­cause coro­n­avirus-re­lat­ed dis­rup­tions may make it dif­fi­cult for com­pa­nies to make doc­u­ments and wit­ness­es avail­able, Bloomberg re­port­ed.

That could mean a sud­den road­block just be­fore the fin­ish line for the gi­ant drug­mak­ers, who have been slow-walk­ing their way to a merg­er since they an­nounced one last June. Most re­cent­ly, in ear­ly March, the Eu­ro­pean Union gave the all-clear and — months af­ter the FTC is­sued a rare “sec­ond re­quest” in their re­view of the buy­out — the two com­pa­nies said they had agreed to a time­line with the US agency to fin­ish by the first days of the 2nd quar­ter, i.e. ear­ly April or May.

The new­found mo­men­tum came af­ter Al­ler­gan di­vest­ed brazikum­ab, an IL-23 in­hibitor, back to As­traZeneca. In let­ters to the FTC, unions, con­sumer ad­vo­ca­cy groups and De­mo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors raised an­titrust con­cerns about the drug’s sim­i­lar­i­ty to Ab­b­Vie’s IL-23 in­hibitor Skyrizi. Al­ler­gan’s en­docrine drug Zen­pep was al­so di­vest­ed to Nestlé for sim­i­lar rea­sons.

In a state­ment re­leased yes­ter­day, Ab­b­Vie and Al­ler­gan said they had en­tered in­to a con­sent de­cree with the FTC on the di­vest­ments. The com­pa­nies said they ex­pect­ed to close in May.

Di­vesti­tures of this kind are rou­tine in Big Phar­ma merg­ers. Last year, Cel­gene di­vest­ed Ote­zla for $13.4 bil­lion as part of its buy­out by Bris­tol My­ers. The brazikum­ab sell-off, though, didn’t sat­is­fy many of the unions and con­sumer groups op­pos­ing the deal, who wrote to the FTC in Feb­ru­ary that As­traZeneca was ill-po­si­tioned to bring the drug for­ward and that Ab­b­Vie’s re­bate walls on Skyrizi would lim­it the ri­val drug’s mar­ket po­ten­tial.

This deal would make Ab­b­Vie the fourth largest phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny in the world.

With rumors swirling about a potential buyout of biotech Acceleron and its lead PAH drug sotatercept, market watchers have been keeping close tabs on industry movers and shakers due up for an expensive bolt-on. According to a new report, it appears Merck may be the one.

Merck is in “advanced talks” on a deal to acquire Cambridge, MA-based Acceleron in what previous reports pegged as a potential $11 billion buyout, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday. A deal could come as early as this week, according to the Journal.

Sanofi is throwing in the towel on mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccines.

The French drugmaker will halt development on its unmodified mRNA Covid-19 shot despite what it said were positive Phase I/II results, a spokesperson told Endpoints News on Tuesday morning. Sanofi said the reason it’s stopping the Covid-19 mRNA program, developed in partnership with its new $3.2 billion acquisition Translate Bio, is because the market is too crowded.

Licensing is one of the most common ways big drugmakers leverage biotech innovation to drive gains across their pipelines — and the structure of those deals is pretty well established. But one biotech with home bases in China and the US thinks it may have a better way.

On Tuesday, Cambridge-based biotech Anji Pharma closed a $70 million Series B with two late-stage molecules in the fold and a mission to rewrite the rules of drug licensing through what it calls “dynamic equity” deals and a joint venture-heavy game plan. The round was funded in whole by Chinese hedge fund CR Capital.

Pfizer and BioNTech said Tuesday they submitted to FDA positive data from a Phase II/III trial of their Covid-19 vaccine in children aged 5 to less than 12 years old.

A formal EUA submission for the vaccine in these children is expected to follow “in the coming weeks,” the companies said in a statement.

The trial of 2,268 healthy participants aged 5 to less than 12 years old showed the vaccine was safe and elicited robust neutralizing antibody responses using a two-dose regimen of 10 μg doses, which is one-third the dose that’s administered to adults.