90-Second Read: Lilly wheels and deals, Moderna gets boost on Hantavirus scare, ASCO excitement builds

Outside of vaccines, Lilly scooped up preclinical biotech Engage Bio for $202 million and teamed up with AI company Collaborative Drug Discovery for its life sciences data management solutions. These deals and Lilly's skyrocketing revenue pushed the Indianapolis-based company to the top of IDEA Pharma's list of best inventors and innovators. Though not stealing as many headlines as Lilly, Moderna also made news this week with a surprising uptick in its share price that analysts are attributing to the so-called "fear trade" that is rising amid reports of a cluster of cases of Hantavirus. On Tuesday, the company dove into the deep end of vaccine development with three separate buys in the space: Curevo, LimmaTech Biologics and Vaccine Company.

Last week, Lilly announced that next-gen asset retatrutide led to weight loss of 70 pounds, or 28.3% at 80 weeks, setting a new benchmark for the space. And in the cardiovascular space, Lilly's $1.3 billion acquisition of Verve Therapeutics is so far going well for the Big Pharma, this week yielding Phase 1 results for a cholesterol-lowering gene therapy. Moderna also announced that its mRNA flu shot, initially turned away from the FDA but later accepted for review, will be discussed at an advisory committee on June 18.

It's the first year that a single company has swept the two categories. Notably, such meetings have been largely absent from the regulator's processes of late, with AstraZeneca breaking the drought at the end of April with the first FDA adcomm in nine months. Data for each of these assets will be presented at plenary sessions at the meeting.