Lonza Group AG

More than a year after Lonza announced it will sell its capsules and health business, the Swiss CDMO said it has yet to finalize the deal with a buyer. A spokesperson said it has multiple potential bidders, but declined to add further details on who they were, how many there are, and when it hopes to close a transaction. Lonza first announced the divestiture of its CHI business back in December 2024. “Lonza continues to advance the CHI carve‑out and exit process as planned,” the spokesperson added. To potentially help it secure a buyer, Lonza said on Wednesday its CHI business saw a return to growth in 2025. Sales rose 3.9% for the year after they declined multiple times throughout 2024. Overall, the service provider said it beat total earnings expectations by around 0.7%, reaching CHF 6.55 billion ($8.58 billion) in revenue for 2025 — up 19.2% compared to 2024. Lonza attributed its revenue growth to “higher than expected” demand at its site in Vacaville, CA that it acquired from Roche in March 2024. The CDMO secured its fifth commercial contract for the mammalian manufacturing facility, with other contracts in late-stage negotiations, according to a release. “Those five contracts, which are large, will only come to full fruition after 2028, because that’s the time you need to actually tech-transfer and ramp it up. So this is already feeding growth beyond 2028,” CEO Wolfgang Wienand said during Lonza’s earnings call on Wednesday. But in a same-day note, William Blair analysts said they expect some “light pushback” since the Vacaville site had to offset a lower-than-expected revenue for Lonza’s biologics business. The company’s biologics revenue missed analyst expectations by 2% at CHF 3.65 billion ($4.7 billion) for 2025. Further, Lonza’s sales growth outlook for 2026 is slightly lower compared to the previous year, attributed to the weakening US dollar. Lonza is forecasting sales growth between 11% and 12% for 2026, which is down compared to the sales growth of 21.7% in 2025.

iStock, Sundry Photography The cornerstone of the deal is SIM0709, which Simcere designed to target both TL1A and IL-23, crucial players in facilitating inflammation. Boehringer Ingelheim will advance the asset for inflammatory bowel diseases. Following in the footsteps of its pharma peers, Boehringer Ingelheim took a trip to China in search of new assets—and picked up an investigational bispecific antibody from Shanghai-based Simcere Pharmaceutical for the treatment of inflammatory bowel diseases. The companies did not provide a specific financial breakdown of the deal in their Tuesday release , revealing only that Boehringer could be on the hook for up to €1.058 billion—or approximately $1.26 billion—in total. This sum covers an upfront commitment plus success-based development, regulatory and commercial milestones. At the heart of the agreement is SIM0709, a bispecific antibody that can bind TL1A and IL-23, both of which play key roles in promoting inflammation. With its mechanism of action, SIM0709 blocks “two core pathways that drive the onset and progression of IBD [inflammatory bowel disease],” according to the companies’ news release. SIM0709 is currently in pre-clinical development. Under Tuesday’s partnership, Boehringer will have the right to advance the drug worldwide, outside the Greater China region. Simcere will be entitled to royalties on net-sales of SIM0709 outside of China. “In IBD, too many patients continue to progress and experience severe complications despite currently available anti-inflammatory therapies,” Carine Boustany, global head of Immunology and Respiratory Diseases at Boehringer, said in a statement, adding that SIM0709 is a “potential life changing option” for patients with IBD. Investing in a molecule still in early-stage development is part of Boehringer’s business development philosophy. “We don’t make the same level of headlines because we’re not buying things that are in late-stage development,” Brian Hilberdink, president of U.S. Human Pharma, told BioSpace in an interview on the sidelines of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference earlier this month. “When you think about Pfizer and Novo going to battle over that obesity portfolio , that’s not the game that Boehringer wants to play.” Boehringer has steadily put business development dollars into its pipeline over the last year or so. In early January last year, for instance, the pharma inked two antibody-drug conjugate deals : one with Synaffix for up to $1.3 billion and another with Oxford BioTherapeutics, with which Boehringer exercised an option to advance a fourth cancer target. In April that year, Boehringer put up to $357 million on the line to partner with Cue Biopharma, gaining access to an experimental B cell depleter that the pharma will test for autoimmune conditions. Boehringer followed this up with a $1 billion bet in July with U.K.-based Re-Vana Therapeutics, focused on developing extended-release therapies for eye diseases. Boehringer turned to Asia after that, linking up with South Korea’s AimedBio in a deal focused on an antibody-drug conjugate—though it remains unclear what the partners will develop it for. The pharma is paying up to $991 million for the asset.

Synaffix, a biotechnology company owned by Swiss-headquartered contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) Lonza, and Sidewinder Therapeutics, a San Diego–based biotech focused on precision antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) therapies, have entered into a multi-target licensing agreement aimed at advancing the development of first-in-class bispecific antibody-drug conjugates for solid tumor indications. Under the agreement, Sidewinder gains access to Lonza’s clinically validated, site-specific ADC technology platform, including antibody conjugation, polar spacer, and linker-payload technologies, according to the announcement. Sidewinder will apply the platform to its pipeline of bispecific antibodies designed to enhance tumor-cell specificity and internalization, with the goal of improving the therapeutic index of ADCs for solid tumors. “Sidewinder’s bispecific antibody approach targeting tumor-specific receptor complexes combined with Synaffix’s clinically validated site-specific linker-payload platform creates an ideal synergy with the potential to greatly impact patient benefit,” Eric Murphy, co–founder and CEO of Sidewinder, said in a statement. “This collaboration advances our mission to reshape the cancer treatment landscape by improving tolerability for bispecific ADCs.” Lonza will be eligible to receive upfront, clinical, regulatory, and commercial milestone payments, as well as royalties on net sales of any resulting products, the companies said. The CDMO will manufacture components related to its proprietary technologies, while Sidewinder will be responsible for research, development, manufacturing, and commercialization of the ADC candidates. The licensing agreement comes as Lonza continues to emphasize its global manufacturing footprint and available U.S. capacity as a competitive advantage, according to recent analyst coverage . William Blair analysts have said Lonza is the only CDMO with available large-scale U.S. mammalian capacity, pointing in part to the company’s acquisition of Roche’s Vacaville, California facility and ongoing investments to integrate and upgrade the site . Analysts have also cited Lonza’s parallel investments in Europe, including a new fill-and-finish facility in Stein, Switzerland, as strengthening its ability to support customers across modalities, geographies, and stages of development.