💊 Aspen Pharma’s Chinese acquisition; The AMA journey so far; Drought a planetary scale emergency

#486 | Choosing capsaicin over fentanyl; Fixing protein folding gone awry; Bird flu back in Belgium

Hello, and welcome back to The Kable once again. The news from Palestine continues to remain dire, with daily bombings and 1000s of dead becoming routine again. The WHO has asked Israel to desist from attacking health facilities, even while the agency chief gets on Twitter to ask Israel to take back orders calling for the removal of medical supplies from warehouses in Gaza.

Moving on to more hopeful news.

South Africa HQ-ed Aspen Pharma has graced The Kable more often than any other company from Africa. Today, Aspen is back in the news for its acquisition of Sandoz's China business in a deal worth a fraction more than $100 million. The deal also sees Aspen offload European rights to four of its anaesthetic products to Sandoz.

In other corporate news of the day, Roche is queuing up to enter the obesity drug race with a $2.7 billion acquisition of Carmot Therapeutics. The deal sees Roche gain access to three clinical-stage assets for metabolic disorders.

Oh, and bird flu is back, baby. This time, on a Belgian farm.

And finally, right from the time it was announced that a fossil fuel chief will be heading COP28, we at The Kable have been sceptical about any impact on fossil fuel plans from the summit. And evidently, we have been right to be sceptical. It emerges that even now, negotiators are only considering adding fossil fuel phase-outs to the conference draft. All this while the conference itself releases a report talking about fossil fuel emissions hitting record highs this year.