This year saw a record number of mergers and acquisitions between drugmakers, resulting in a total $342 billion spent on deals, according to MarketWatch.
So far, there have been 484 deals in 2019, up from 365 in 2018. That's higher than any year since 1995, when Dealogic, a financial markets platform, began tracking deals.
In 2018, companies spent $97 billion on M&A. The previous record was $215 billion in 2016.
Boosting this year's numbers is a trend of large, legacy drugmakers buying drugs from other companies rather than developing drugs themselves, according to MarketWatch. For example, in August Amgen bought Celegene's drug, Otezla, a psoriasis treatment, for $13.4 billion.
Deals in which drugmakers purchased a drug from another company have totaled $56 billion so far in 2019, compared to the previous five-year average of $46 billion.
This year also has seen several megamergers, such as AbbVie acquiring Allergan and Bristol-Myers Squibb acquiring Celgene.
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