Drug Development

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In the midst of regulatory and political upheaval, biopharma’s R&D engine kept running, churning out highs and lows in equal parts. Here are some of this year’s most glorious clinical trial victories.
Every year in biopharma brings its share of grueling defeats, and 2025 was no different, especially for companies targeting neurological diseases. Some failures split up partners, and one particularly egregious case even led to the demise of an entire company.
The R&D pipeline for depression therapies faced a demoralizing 2025 as five high-profile candidates, including KOR antagonists by Johnson & Johnson and Neumora Therapeutics, flunked late-stage clinical trials, underscoring the persistent challenges of CNS drug development.
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Bucking its recent winning streak in oncology, AstraZeneca reported Tuesday that its AKT inhibitor Truqap failed to significantly boost overall survival in patients with triple-negative breast cancer.
Promising data from the DREAMM-7 and DREAMM-8 trials have revitalized GSK’s blockbuster goals for its antibody-drug conjugate Blenrep, positioned as a second-line treatment for multiple myeloma.
FDA
The FDA is facing four big target action dates in the final week of June, including one label expansion for a bispecific antibody and another for an investigational gene therapy.
The hold on BioNTech and MediLink’s antibody-drug conjugate candidate BNT326/YL202 has halted enrollment in a Phase I U.S. trial in patients with non-small cell lung cancer or breast cancer, following multiple deaths.
Takeda’s soticlestat, licensed from Ovid Therapeutics, did not significantly reduce seizures in patients with Dravet syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, respectively, according to two late-stage readouts on Monday.
Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Jørgensen has agreed to appear before the Senate health committee in a hearing on the prices of its blockbuster drugs Ozempic and Wegovy.
Johnson & Johnson’s FcRn inhibitor nipocalimab in a mid-stage study significantly improved disease activity across various organ systems in patients with the chronic autoimmune Sjögren’s disease.
A final analysis of Gilead Sciences’ now-discontinued Phase III ENHANCE study showed a worrying trend of increased death risk in myelodysplastic syndromes patients treated with magrolimab.
While GLP-1 drugs remain wildly popular and are a highly lucrative sector, data analytics firm GlobalData contends manufacturing and cost will remain overhangs on the obesity market.
Accurately diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease pathologies is becoming increasingly important, but the U.S. is facing imaging resource constraints.