EQT Private Equity, through Crown NL Bidco, is taking QIAGEN private for €46.50 a share in cash, about $52.22, valuing the company at about €10.8 billion ($12.1 billion) including about $1.1 billion of net debt. Reuters reports that affiliates of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board are taking part. QIAGEN sells QuantiFERON for tuberculosis, QIAstat-Dx for infectious disease testing, QIAcuity digital PCR, therascreen tests that guide cancer treatment, and the QIAamp and RNeasy extraction kits. It will delist from Frankfurt and New York, and closing is expected in mid-2027; if approvals are still pending after 10 months, QIAGEN may pay an interim dividend of up to $0.47 a share.

The 8.6% premium is measured against a share price that had already risen on reports of private equity interest. Against the unaffected price of 8 July it is 40.3%, and 46.9% against the three-month average.

A sale of QIAGEN has failed before. Thermo Fisher agreed to buy it for about $11.5 billion in 2020 and abandoned the deal after failing to win enough shareholder support, Reuters reports, so holders who bought on this year’s bid reports are the ones to persuade, with 8.6% on offer. QIAGEN alone is 66% of the week’s $18.2 billion upfront, and the third week running in which the largest cheque bought a healthcare business with no molecule attached, after Option Care and Xodus Medical. It was one of eight diagnostics deals, among them Labcorp’s $210 million for Myriad Genetics’ prenatal testing business, which Labcorp expects to add about $160 million of revenue in its first year. That is Labcorp’s second laboratory purchase in two weeks, after BioReference.

Cencora, which already holds about 4% of American Oncology Network, agreed to acquire the remaining 96% at an enterprise value of $2.4 billion: $2.3 billion at closing and up to $100 million in contingent value rights. Certain AON stockholders can roll over up to 25% of the company, and on that basis Cencora expects to pay about $1.7 billion to take its ownership to 75%. AON, quoted on the OTCQB, runs a physician-led network of more than 350 cancer care providers across 21 states, and the deal takes Cencora’s oncology management services platform into 12 more states. It needs regulatory clearance and AON stockholder approval, and Cencora expects it to add to adjusted EPS in the second year after closing.

A drug wholesaler is paying $1.7 billion for three-quarters of a network of practices that administer cancer drugs.

Cencora is the second large US drug wholesaler in three weeks to buy into care delivery. McKesson joined CD&R to take Option Care private in Week 41, with a framework to buy CD&R out later, and Fierce Healthcare reports that Cencora had already agreed to take a majority stake in OneOncology, another oncology platform. Both deals give the distributor a staged route to control: McKesson through a later buyout, Cencora from 4% to 75% with a quarter left to holders who roll over. With QIAGEN, the week’s two largest cheques came to $14.4 billion, 79% of the upfront, for businesses that test or treat patients.

Merck KGaA is paying $20 per ADS in cash for Silence Therapeutics, about $1.3 billion in equity value and $1.1 billion in enterprise value, a 130% premium to the prior close, funded with new debt. Silence’s lead, divesiran, is an siRNA for polycythaemia vera that produced responses in 88% of Phase II patients between weeks 18 and 36, Fierce Biotech reports. Gilead is paying $1.275 billion in cash at closing for HCXT-2001, a Phase I oral macrocyclic IL-23R inhibitor for inflammatory bowel disease from PepStar Therapeutics, and its release lists no milestones. Alcon is paying $550 million upfront, plus undisclosed commercial milestones, for Neurotech Pharmaceuticals and Encelto, the encapsulated cell therapy approved in March 2025 as the only FDA-approved treatment for macular telangiectasia type 2.

Gilead paid in full at signing for a Phase I pill whose class already has an approved product, J&J’s Icotyde. Last week it paid Vir 4.8% of a $1.875 billion deal.

Buyers paid in full where the drug or its mechanism had already worked in patients. Divesiran’s case against Takeda and Protagonist’s Mimrylo, a weekly injection approved in August 2026, rests on dosing every 12 weeks in Phase III, and Gilead plans HCXT-2001 alongside emvistegrast, its own α4β7 inhibitor, at a cost of about $0.79 to $0.83 in fourth-quarter EPS. The six acquisitions that disclosed both figures paid 99% of their value at signing. The top five took $17.5 billion, 96% of the upfront, the same share as Week 42, and three of them bought drugs where last week none did.

Hansoh Pharmaceutical granted Roche rights outside mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan to two preclinical antibody-drug conjugates and further programmes against Roche-proposed targets built on Hansoh’s ADC technology, for $400 million upfront, $110 million on the first anniversary and more than $15 billion in milestones. Hansoh leads development through Phase Ia and can opt into up to two programmes outside its territories for added US returns. Zymeworks licensed Roche ZW209, a trispecific T-cell engager against DLL3 with CD28 co-stimulation for small cell lung cancer and other neuroendocrine tumours, for $55 million upfront, $40 million when Phase Ib starts and up to $718 million in milestones, with royalties from the high single digits to the mid-teens.

Hansoh’s deal is 41% of the week’s disclosed value and 2.2% of its upfront.

It is Roche’s second Hansoh ADC licence in a year, after $80 million upfront for the CDH17-targeting HS-20110 in October 2025, Drug Discovery & Development reports, and it follows Roche’s licence from Rona in Week 42. Of Roche’s $16.3 billion, 97% waits on development, approval and sales. Four other licences do not separate upfront from milestones and stay out of the upfront figures: Georgiamune’s $45 million upfront and near-term from Menarini’s Stemline for GIM-621, Kaigene’s up to $580.5 million from Celltrion for the anti-APRIL antibody KG-013, METiS’s low double-digit millions from Lilly against $1.1 billion, and AI Proteins’ up to $400 million from Astellas. Platform-stage deals fell to 4% of disclosed value, from 53% in Week 42.

TriGemX Bio, formerly Kallyope, is going public by merging with TCGX Acquisition Corp and expects about $246 million in gross proceeds: $160 million from a PIPE with TCGX, Viking Global and ADAR1, and about $86 million from the trust if no holders redeem. Its shareholders exchange their stock at an agreed value of $361 million, for a combined equity value of about $600 million, to fund the Phase III programme of elismetrep, an oral TRPM8 blocker for acute migraine with a first readout expected in mid-2027. Bolt Biotherapeutics acquired Prana Therapies in a stock-for-stock reverse merger with a $120 million private placement and up to $60 million more in warrants, to develop PRA-216, an IL-4Rα and TSLP bispecific in Phase II for asthma, COPD and atopic dermatitis.

Bolt’s shareholders keep 6.9% of the company. Prana’s hold 51.7% and the new investors 41.4%.

Reverse mergers sit outside the upfront ranking and the disclosed total; last week Alaunos holders kept 0.98% of Velaris. Tempus disclosed in an 8-K that BMS will pay $137.5 million in fixed payments through 2031 for oncology data and its Lens platform, and Ambrose Healthcare is buying AM-Pharma, a former Pfizer option target, for up to €161 million (about $181 million) without separating upfront from milestones, to develop ilofotase alfa in hypophosphatasia. Seventeen of 34 deals released no terms, including Hologic’s purchase of Reveal Genomics and its HER2DX breast cancer test, Sanofi’s mRNA licence from ScionxBio and Foundation Medicine’s companion diagnostic work with BlossomHill.