Sanofi to Buy Blueprint for $9.1 Billion Equity Value
Sanofi SA will buy Blueprint Medicines Corp. for $9.1 billion equity value, in a deal that sees the European pharmaceutical firm expand its rare immunological disease portfolio.
Sanofi will pay $129 per share in cash, the companies said in a statement Monday. That represents a 27% premium to Blueprint's closing price on Friday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
Billion-Dollar Breakthroughs: Inside The Global Race To Extend Human Healthspan
Hevolution CEO Dr. Mehmood Khan in conversation with GSK Chair Sir Jonathan Symonds In a luxurious conference center buzzing with Nobel laureates, biotech executives and Saudi royalty, one number kept surfacing during presentations: eight billion. Not dollars—though investment figures approached that scale—but people. The potential market for healthspan technologies encompasses every human on earth, creating what might be the ultimate investment opportunity of the 21st century. At the Hevolution Global Healthspan Summit 2025, the world's largest gathering for healthspan science, the discussion wasn't if humans could live longer, healthier lives, but how quickly we could make it happen. "I'm a firm believer, when you put several hundred scientists collectively working in a connected manner in the world, not in any one country, but in the world, from the west to the east, to solve a common challenge, that is how you put a man on the moon," declared Dr. Mehmood Khan, CEO of Hevolution. "That is your moonshot." Hevolution is a first of its kind global non-profit organization incentivizing independent research and entrepreneurship in the emerging field of healthspan science. The urgency behind this global mobilization is clear. Dr. Anshu Banerjee, Director at the World Health Organization, presented sobering statistics: "The number of older people above 60 is going to double by 2050, from 1.1 billion to 2.1 billion, and soon we'll have more people above 60 than under 10." Even more concerning: "Life expectancy is increasing, but healthspan is actually worsening. The increase in healthy life expectancy is not following the same pace as life expectancy overall." Global Lifespan versus Global Healthspan Women face particular challenges in this equation. While they "live longer than men," Banerjee noted they "spend more years in poor health," with the healthspan gap between genders widening since 2002. While American researchers navigate the FDA's complex pathway, Saudi Arabia is positioning itself as the global accelerator for healthspan innovations. His Excellency, addressing attendees, detailed the kingdom's "Innovation Pathways" designed for rapid approval of promising medicines, AI systems, and medical devices. This regulatory agility represents a strategic advantage in what has become a geopolitical race to commercialize healthspan technologies. With "maturity level four" recognition from the WHO and pending "world listed Authority" status, Saudi Arabia is creating an ecosystem where longevity science can flourish without traditional regulatory bottlenecks. The summit's scientific presentations ventured far beyond traditional human-centered research. Comparative biology—studying extraordinarily long-lived species like bowhead whales that can live over 200 years—emerged as a frontier with untapped potential. "These are models of disease resistance, healthspan, and lifespan," explained Dr. Vera Gorbunova, whose work on naked mole rats has revealed remarkable cancer resistance mechanisms. Pedro Magalhães, developer of a comprehensive database tracking lifespans across species, argued that understanding "why we live as long as we live" requires examining the evolutionary innovations that allow certain animals to far outlive humans. This approach faces funding challenges, however. Despite promising discoveries, researchers called for "more consortia" and a "big effort in comparative biology of aging" to translate animal longevity secrets into human applications. The unexpected star of the summit wasn't a new compound but an existing class of medications: GLP-1 agonists, originally developed for diabetes and now famous for weight loss. Dr. Christoph Westphal, co-founder of Longwood Fund, made a stunning prediction: "If all of us in this room, within three or four or five years, can prove that with GLP-1s you can extend healthy lifespan, it will actually be the first healthy lifespan increasing drug available. It's going to totally change the world." Westphal's enthusiasm reflects a paradigm shift in longevity research. "If you had told me that you would take something that has an effect in the brain and all over the body, and it's perfectly safe and it actually makes you live longer, I would have said, no way. But that's exactly what a GLP-1 is." The lesson for investors is clear, according to Dr. Srinivas Akkaraju of Samsara BioCapital: "A drug that shows measurable effects in a modest time with a modest number of patients can lead to longer studies for confirmation." The challenge is finding "near- to medium-term measurements that de-risk the investment." Perhaps the summit's most ambitious initiative is already underway in the UK. Professor Rahid Ali's "Our Future Health" program has collected data from over 1.5 million participants, with 1.3 million providing blood samples, making it the "world's largest health research study of its type." By deploying collection points in everyday locations like supermarkets and pharmacies, the program has democratized participation across socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. The goal: five million participants creating an unprecedented dataset that could reveal the early signals of disease and the effectiveness of preventative interventions. Notably, Ali reported that "about 80% of the general population, once they understand the importance of working with industry, are willing to participate" despite growing privacy concerns around health data. "We're investing across the entire value chain, from idea all the way into clinical trials and beyond," explained a senior Hevolution executive. The foundation isn't just writing checks—it's creating an "action shop and a money shop" designed to shepherd promising longevity science from laboratory concepts to market-ready interventions. Dr. William Greene, Chief Investment Officer at Hevolution Foundation, emphasized the need to "invest in translation, since there's a valley of death between interesting laboratory observation and something that seems to actually impact health." The goal is finding "the outcome that we're looking for that will actually make humans into big mice"—transitioning laboratory findings into human benefits. This fundamental challenge was echoed by Dr. Jarod Rutledge: "If you're trying to do genomic management, or something that's purely preventative, commercial models are very challenging, but if you can start from a state of disease and walk all the way back to state of youthful health, then I think that is really promising." In an industry where early adopters could pay millions for unproven therapies, Hevolution's emphasis on global equity stood out. Arthur Caplan, head of medical ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, emphasized that proposals undergo rigorous ethical review centered on one question: "Is the science good, but can it help fulfill the commitment to benefit all?" This principle—extending healthspan advancements to "all of human humanity" rather than creating a longevity gap between wealthy and developing nations—appears foundational to Hevolution's approach. HRH Dr. Haya Al Saud, SVP of Research at Hevolution, outlined the broader societal benefits: "First, we'll be able to reduce healthcare costs. Healthcare spending is skyrocketing worldwide, so this is a crucial and immediate impact. Second, we can tackle the workforce challenge we're seeing today... If we're able to extend healthspan, people can live—and work—longer, in good health." Dr. Haya at Global Healthspan Summit 2025. She also highlighted a surprising social benefit: "Many women leave the workforce because they are the primary caregivers for sick family members. By extending healthspan, we can support and encourage women to remain in the workforce." The summit highlighted how philanthropic organizations are evolving from passive funders to active ecosystem builders. Her Royal Highness Princess Dr. Haya bint Khaled Al Saud described philanthropy as a "catalyst for change" in the healthspan field. Yet Dr. Khan insists that true global access requires commercial involvement: "I do not believe there is an example, other than maybe mass polio vaccine campaigns, where the public sector can, on its own, democratize something. Every example I can think of in democratization has happened because the private sector figured out how to get something into the hands of as many people as possible." He added a historical perspective: "Government invented the internet, the private sector scaled it, and then leveraged it for core commerce." As Dr. Khan concluded the summit, he emphasized that it's not heroic individuals but collective wisdom that will transform aging: "It is not heroes that we are developing. It is the future of this collective wisdom that we're actually investing behind, because it's going to take the village, not a hero." The fundamental question remains: Can we translate scientific breakthroughs into practical interventions that meaningfully extend the healthy human lifespan? The convergence of unprecedented funding, regulatory innovation, massive datasets, and ethical frameworks suggests we're entering a new phase in longevity science—one where theory meets application. Whether the first beneficiaries emerge from clinical trials in Riyadh, research labs in Boston, or digital health platforms in London remains to be seen. What's clear is that the race for extended healthspan has evolved from fringe science to mainstream pursuit. With eight billion potential customers waiting, the winners stand to transform not just healthcare, but the fundamental human experience of aging itself.
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
How To Love Your (Agentic) Database Administrator
An Internet Geek Developers love meritocracy. Software engineering professionals don't judge individuals by the way they look, the way they dress and whether or not they have a purple-green hair dye rinse on their head (spoiler alert, it's actually considered a good thing)... and they never have. They tend to classify their counterparts and contemporaries on the basis of their skillset, their ability to show technical competency and their enthusiasm for the combined arts of coding and data science. If there's one chink in that argument, it's a possible hierachy between the developer community and the operations team. While the developers get to build, program and create, the Ops team are assigned the responsibility to underpin, maintain and manage. Some developers occasionally regard the sysadmins, database administrators and testing team as less skilled; the rise of DevOps has sought to unite these two streams and platform engineering is also aiming to create and reinforce bonds, but fractures inevitably exist. Could a new wave of agentic AI services in the data management space actually help elevate the status of this essential function and, just maybe, actually help elevate the status of this role to the tier that it deserves? Lithuania-based tech writer Jastra Kranjec says we're on the cusp. Citing the multiplicity of management consultancy reports in this space that suggest AI agents are about to really start helping us work (Capgemini's Top Tech Trends of 2025 survey points to their use to boost efficiency and develop automation), Kranjec says that AI agents have now 'evolved from experimental tools' into mainstream business solutions. 'Last year, even major enterprises like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Microsoft and PwC began integrating them into their operations, proving them as one of the top AI trends. Moreover, this is just the beginning of AI agents` growth, with market projections showing a surging adoption in the years ahead. Last year, the AI agent industry was valued at around $5.1 billion. This figure is projected to soar by a whopping 821%, reaching $47 billion by 2030,' wrote Kranjec. While such massive percentage projections make for dizzying reading, perhaps we should centralize our focus on the actual jobs agentic AI can now take on. In the data management and manipulation space, that brings us back to the poor database administrator, could the AI DBA be about to become the real hero? Stewart Bond sees a role for this exact job function. In his role as VP of data intelligence and integration software at technology analyst house IDC, he projects that AI can now take on a central role in data orchestration and administration. 'The rise of agentic AI orchestration is expected to accelerate, and companies need to start preparing now,' said Bond. 'To unlock agentic AI's full potential, companies should seek solutions that unify disparate data types, including structured, unstructured, real-time and historical information, in a single environment. This allows AI to derive richer insights and drive more impactful outcomes.' Bond makes his comments in order to contextualize new services stemming from data streaming company Confluent. The organization has now come forward with new Confluent Cloud capabilities that are said to make it easier to process and secure data for faster insights and decision-making. Looking at exactly which products and tools are now on offer, snapshot queries is a new service in Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink designed to bring together real-time and historic data processing to make AI agents and analytics smarter. Confluent Cloud network routing works in concert with this technology to simplify private networking for Apache Flink (an open source data stream processing framework for running computations in 'bounded' - those with a defined start and end - and unbounded data stream environments) and this all sits alongside IP filtering to adds access controls, thereby securing data for agentic AI and analytics. 'Agentic AI is moving from hype to enterprise adoption as organizations look to gain a competitive edge and win in today's market,' said Shaun Clowes, chief product officer at Confluent. 'But without high-quality data, even the most advanced systems can't deliver real value. The new Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink features make it possible to blend real-time and batch data so that enterprises can trust their agentic AI to drive real change.' Clowes agrees with the proposition that Confluent didn't necessarily build this technology to enable, create or innovate the true arrival of the agentic DBA, but he concurs, if the continued extension of the company's platform makes this 'job position' a reality, then it will surely serve IT stacks in every industry for the better. We can certainly suggest that agentic AI is driving widespread change in business operations from the DBA, right upwards through the developer function to the application and user interface. 'However, for AI data agents to make the right decisions, they need historical context about what happened in the past and insight into what's happening right now. For example, for fraud detection, banks need real-time data to react in the moment and historical data to see if a transaction fits a customer's usual patterns. Hospitals need real-time vitals alongside patient medical history to make safe, informed treatment decisions. But to leverage both past and present data, teams often have to use separate tools and develop manual workarounds, resulting in time-consuming work and broken workflows. Additionally, it's important to secure the data that's used for analytics and agentic AI; this ensures trustworthy results and prevents sensitive data from being accessed,' explains Confluent, in a technical product statement. To address these challenges, the company says that snapshot queries in Confluent Cloud let teams unify historical and streaming data with a single product and language, enabling consistent, intelligent experiences for both analytics and agentic AI. With the company's Tableflow service integration, teams can gain context from past data. Snapshot queries allow teams to explore, test, and analyze data without spinning up new workloads. This makes it easier to supply agents with context from historic and real-time data or conduct an audit to understand key trends and patterns. 'The rise of the Agentic DBA is already happening… and there are some very 'human' reasons behind it. Dealing with disruptions like anomalies, outages, or performance optimizations is distracting (to say the least) for DBAs and data infrastructure teams,' enthused Karthik Ranganathan, co-founder & CEO of cloud-native open source database company Yugabyte. 'DBA agents are trained to respond and optimize automatically, allowing human workers to focus on more strategic business value tasks.' Ranganathan says that agentic DBAs are capable of anything from performing query execution patterns to analyzing resource trends to mentoring cloud cluster health, which means all these tasks can now be dealt with automatically. This allows DBAs to avoid 'alert fatigue' and learn from previously taken actions when their workload permits. 'The agentic DBA is a natural extension of modern databases, such as distributed SQL databases. The point of a PostgreSQL-compatible distributed database is to deliver cloud-native apps that scale effortlessly, are never offline and automate tasks like backups behind the scenes. The rise of the agentic DBA, which fine-tunes performance on the fly, will need to be part of any cloud-native distributed database going forward,' stated Yugabyte's Ranganathan. There are many technologies in this space now coming forward. If you're lucky enough to get invited to an Oracle welcome keynote on a Sunday night at its tech events, this is the kind of technology that the company talks about volubly. With so many database functions now ripe for moving to automation such as patching, maintenance checks, upgrades and perhaps also data normalization and deduplicatoin, it's no surprise to hear the database giant talk about database automation. Does IBM make something in this area too? Usually, is the safe answer. May this year saw the company announce its answer to database automation challenges in the form of Db2 Intelligence Center, an AI-powered database management platform designed specifically for Db2 database administrators and IT professionals managing databases. 'We've spent years talking to Db2 database administrators, understanding their pain points, frustrations and the complexity of their workflows. The feedback we have captured is loud and clear: DBAs are tired of fragmented tools that don't integrate with each other. They're tired of the endless libraries of scripts where each DBA maintains his or her own variations and they're tired of constantly reacting to problems and manually troubleshooting, as opposed to being proactive in their database management approach,' said Ani Joshi, senior product manager for Db2, IBM data & AI. Db2 Intelligence Center is a unified, intelligent management console purpose-built for Db2 administrators. It combines advanced monitoring, AI-powered troubleshooting and query optimization into an integrated service that simplifies and accelerates many aspects of Db2 management. With these (arguably) not insignificant automations now coming to the fore, some may ask whether we will have succeeded in making the role of the human database administrator redundant. The answer to that question is, obviously, of course no, don't be silly. What we're seeing here are the mechanical repetitively rote tasks that a DBA has to undertake, now taken out of their workflow to some degree (in some cases totally) and so creating a new DBA role that can start to work more closely with the developer team, provide more business-centric value through increased proximity to commercial teams while also now working to innovate and create new data services. If all that doesn't make you love your DBA just that little bit more, then you just might need a hug.
Bloomberg
an hour ago
- Bloomberg
European Stocks Tick Higher on Easing Inflation; Miners Decline
European stocks edged higher as euro-area inflation eased more than expected, bolstering the case for further interest-rate cuts. Miners dropped after glum China economic data. The Stoxx 600 Index closed up 0.1%, erasing a decline of as much as 0.5%. That's as US equities shrugged off earlier concerns after the OECD warned that President Donald Trump's trade policies have tipped the world economy into a downturn. Jobs data showed the US labor market is holding up.
