Dan Samorodnitsky

Dan Samorodnitsky

News Editor

Dan Samorodnitsky is the news editor at BioSpace. He has a decade of experience covering biotech, genetics and medicine. Before coming to BioSpace he was an editor at Drug Discovery News and Massive Science, and his writing has appeared in outlets such as Quanta, STAT, GROW and many others. He is based in Minneapolis. You can reach him at dan.samorodnitsky@biospace.com.

It doesn’t matter how many times you have traversed Union Square; no one knows which way is north, or where The Westin is in relation to the Ritz Carlton. A Verizon outage brought that into focus on Wednesday of JPM week.
HIV
At a J.P. Morgan media event Tuesday, the Gilead C-suite seemed to be walking on air as they highlighted Yeztugo’s capture of the HIV market and its plans for business development.
AbbVie and Novartis strike billion-dollar pacts while attendees at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference await that one big M&A deal and Merck teases limitless buying capacity; Eli Lilly readies for potential orforglipron launch while Novo Nordisk laments compounders; the IPO window cracks open; and the FDA concludes that GLP-1s do not pose a suicide risk.
Former European Trade Commissioner Phil Hogan and former U.S. Senator Richard Burr, speaking on a panel at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, pushed to see a larger picture beyond the Trump administration’s year of chaos and confusion.
Insmed’s freshly approved lung condition drug soared past sales expectations for 2025, netting $144.6 million in its first full quarter of sales.
The DC-based biopharma disputed the FDA’s conclusions regarding the data provided in its supplemental application for Hetlioz and promised to keep pushing for an approval.
The company announced a $350 million public offering on Monday shortly after revealing positive Phase II results for its investigational congenital adrenal hyperplasia drug, with hopes to one day compete with Neurocrine’s Crenessity.
Novo Nordisk follows Christmas oral Wegovy approval with quick launch; Eli Lilly is headed for $94.3 billion in annual revenue by 2027, analysts predict; nine more pharmas strike Most Favored Nation deals but half remain unsigned; experts call for stability and rare disease action at FDA, and all eyes are on M&A ahead of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference next week.
The US dramatically altered its recommendations for a series of vaccines, which drive billion-dollar earnings for giants like Merck and Pfizer.
After getting the crucial first-mover advantage with an FDA approval for a weight loss pill, Novo Nordisk looks to win the market before rival Lilly can arrive with its own oral option for obesity.
Pfizer and Metsera, Sarepta and uniQure made the list with dramatic tales. The other two spots went to the regulatory challenges facing biopharma under the new administration, especially in the vaccines sector.
FDA
Policy initiatives have come fast and furious at the FDA this year. While guidances on rare diseases and vaccines have consumed most of the ink, policy shifts aimed at improving FDA efficiencies and reshoring U.S. manufacturing also got some attention. Here, BioSpace rounds up more than a dozen initiatives relevant to the biopharma industry.
A report from analysts at Jefferies suggested that new screenings for metachromatic leukodystrophy and Duchenne muscular dystrophy could bump sales of the gene therapy Libmeldy by more than $100 million.
BioMarin Pharmaceutical has faced a rocky road, promising and then backing off revenue targets and cutting assets that have underperformed. But Amicus’ rare disease portfolio is already bringing in $600 million annually.
After 27 years in business, Cytokinetics hopes to pit its own cardiac myosin inhibitor against one it initially developed—now owned by Bristol Myers Squibb—in a market worth billions. Aficamten has a PDUFA date of Dec. 26.