Merck’s neuro-inspired buyout; Bayer’s bad week; One launch, one shutdown for Flagship; and more

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De­spite the short week, there were some pret­ty in­ter­est­ing sto­ries. No mat­ter where you are read­ing from, hap­py (Thanks­giv­ing) week­end!

Mer­ck’s neu­ro-in­spired buy­out

In a push to broad­en its neu­ro­science pipeline, Mer­ck is snap­ping up a pri­vate biotech fo­cused on ge­net­i­cal­ly de­fined neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­or­ders and rare dis­eases. Car­away Ther­a­peu­tics share­hold­ers can earn up to $610 mil­lion from the buy­out, in­clud­ing an undis­closed up­front. The biotech is de­vel­op­ing a slate of pre­clin­i­cal small mol­e­cules de­signed to clear tox­ic pro­teins from cells, and a Mer­ck ex­ec­u­tive tells us “they’ve reached an in­flec­tion point that it makes sense for Mer­ck to take over.”

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