All the en­thu­si­asm that’s been whipped up in the gene ther­a­py field this past year has helped stoke the ru­mor mill about all sorts of pos­si­bil­i­ties for uniQure $QURE, which has seen a quick run-up on its share price. And now the biotech’s back­ers are get­ting a big boost from Bloomberg to keep the run go­ing.

There’s no deal to re­port, but sources are telling the busi­ness news ser­vice that uniQure has brought in ad­vis­ers to see what might be done — in­clud­ing a sale — with the phar­ma gi­ants now prowl­ing the clin­i­cal play­ers for part­ners and ac­qui­si­tions.

Cue more ex­cit­ed chat­ter on Twit­ter about the pos­si­bil­i­ties.

The sto­ry comes in the wake of No­var­tis’ $8.7 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion of AveX­is, which de­liv­ered the new­ly ap­proved gene ther­a­py Zol­gens­ma, now the high­est priced ther­a­py on the plan­et (for a one-time use). Blue­bird may have raised more ques­tions than they an­swered with its new­ly an­nounced $1.8 mil­lion stick­er on their first gene ther­a­py ap­proval, but they’ve kept things in­ter­est­ing. And Roche may be strug­gling, but it’s in­tent on clos­ing its $4.3 bil­lion Spark buy­out to add gene ther­a­py to the port­fo­lio.

UniQure start­ed the year with a share price of $28.53. Now, close to 6 months lat­er, it will open in the morn­ing at $72.55, with a $2.74 bil­lion mar­ket cap that would make it an easy bolt-on for any big play­er look­ing to ei­ther get in­to the game or ex­pand the team.

That said, these source-dri­ven moves to “ex­plore op­tions” quite of­ten end nowhere. UniQure has been around for 21 years and is wide­ly fol­lowed these days for its late-stage he­mo­phil­ia B gene ther­a­py pro­gram. They don’t need to plant a ‘for sale’ sign in the yard to make it known they’re avail­able.

Just how hot is gene ther­a­py in the deal world these days? We’ll take an in-depth look at the num­bers for you ear­ly Mon­day.

The sign is still there, a quaint reminder of whitewashed concrete not 5 miles from Genentech’s sprawling, chrome-and-glass campus: South Francisco The Industrial City. 

The city keeps the old sign, first erected in 1923, as a tourist site and a kind of civic memento to the days it packed meat, milled lumber and burned enough steel to earn the moniker “Smokestack of the Peninsula.” But the real indication of where you are and how much has changed both in San Francisco and in the global economy since a couple researchers and investors rented out an empty warehouse 40 years ago comes in a far smaller blue sign, resembling a Rotary Club post, off the highway: South San Francisco, The Birthplace of Biotech.

Novo Nordisk’s priority review voucher on oral semaglutide has paid off. The FDA approval for the GLP-1 drug hit late Friday morning, around six months after the NDA filing.

Rybelsus will be the first GLP-1 pill to enter the type 2 diabetes market — a compelling offering that analysts have pegged as a blockbuster drug with sales estimates ranging from $2 billion to $5 billion.

Ozempic, the once-weekly injectable formulation of semaglutide, brought in around $552 million (DKK 3.75 billion) in the first half of 2019.

There are two updates on the lawsuit against Purdue Pharma over its role in fueling the opioid epidemic, as the Sackler family threatens to walk away from their pledge to pay out $3 billion if a bankruptcy judge does not stop outstanding state lawsuits against them. At the same time, the company has asked permission to pay millions in bonuses to select employees.

Purdue filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy this week as part of its signed resolution to over 2,000 lawsuits. The deal would see the Sackler family that owns Purdue give $3 billion from their personal wealth and the company turned into a trust committed to curbing and reversing overdoses.

While Novartis painstakingly works to mop up the stench of the data manipulation scandal associated with its expensive gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) Zolgensma— rival Biogen is attempting to expand the use of its SMA therapy, Spinraza. 

The US drugmaker $BIIB secured US approval for Spinraza for use in the often fatal genetic disease in 2016. The approval covered a broad range of patients with infantile-onset (most likely to develop Type 1) SMA. 

After months of buzz from both sides of the aisle, Speaker Nancy Pelosi will today introduce her plan to allow the federal government to negotiate prices for 250 prescription drugs, setting up a showdown with a pharmaceutical industry working overtime to prevent it.

The need to limit drug prices is a rare point of agreement between President Trump and Democrats, although the president has yet to comment on the proposal and will likely face pressure to back a more conservative option or no bill at all. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is reportedly lobbying his fellow party members on a more modest proposal he negotiated with Democratic Senator Ron Wyden in July.