#JPM24 quick hits: A 'great year for M&A'; an op­ti­mistic Sarep­ta; Pfiz­er's CEO + more

SAN FRAN­CIS­CO — The deal­mak­ing on the first day of the JP Mor­gan Health­care Con­fer­ence once again served as a barom­e­ter for an in­dus­try that’s been dragged down by what Flag­ship Pi­o­neer­ing founder Noubar Afeyan de­scribes as a “poly­cri­sis” of wars, pol­i­tics and weak­ened trust.

But it’s not all bad news! We saw some in­ter­est­ing deals emerge on Mon­day. Mer­ck is spend­ing $680 mil­lion to buy Har­poon Ther­a­peu­tics, No­var­tis li­censed two car­dio­vas­cu­lar RNAi drugs from Shang­hai Ar­go Bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal for $185 mil­lion up­front, and John­son & John­son bought an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate de­vel­op­er Am­brx Bio­phar­ma for $2 bil­lion in cash.

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