Lilly inked a deal with Eddingpharm for the rights to two legacy antibiotic medicines and a manufacturing facility in Suzhou, China.

Bristol-Myers Squibb’s shareholders voted to approve the drugmaker’s $74 billion takeover of Celgene despite a campaign by activist hedge fund Starboard Value LP to scuttle the deal.

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals is investing $800 million in Alnylam Pharmaceuticals to develop treatments for eye and central nervous system diseases using gene-silencing RNA interference technology.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Roivant Sciences has launched another “vant” company, this time in China, in a partnership with Hong Kong-based Sinovant Sciences.

Novartis agreed to pay $310 million upfront, with the possibility for more later, for some research assets of Boston-based inflammation specialist IFM Therapeutics as the Swiss drugmaker expands the company’s immunology pipeline.

AstraZeneca will pay up to $6.9 billion to work with Daiichi Sankyo on a hotly tipped experimental treatment for breast cancer, in a direct challenge to the world’s largest cancer drug maker Roche.

Durham, N.C.-based Precision BioSciences set the company’s initial public offering price at $16 per share, raising $126.4 million.

Samsung Bioepis Co. Ltd. announced the company’s expansion in mainland China through a licensing agreement with C-Bridge Capital. The transaction covers multiple biosimilar candidates from Samsung Bioepis, including third-wave biosimilar candidates SB11 and SB12 – which reference Lucentis (ranibizumab) and Soliris (eculizumab) – as well as the biosimilar candidate SB3 that references Herceptin (trastuzumab).

Takeda and BioSurfaces announced a deal to initiate a research program designed to develop innovative medical devices to treat patients with GI diseases.

For the world’s drug makers 2016 was a year of two halves. Dealmaking and venture funding held up over the first two quarters, buoyed by the retreating bull market. However, as the US presidential election loomed ever closer, companies went into lockdown. Meanwhile, the medtech sector demonstrated that greater efforts are needed to foster innovation if it is to thrive. These findings and more were released as part of the Pharma & Biotech 2016 in Review and Medtech 2016 in Review reports by EP Vantage, the editorial arm of life science market intelligence firm Evaluate.