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Overall, the top 16 largest pharmaceutical companies spent $159 billion on research and development in 2025, compared to $165 billion the year prior. Here’s where all that cash went at companies like Johnson & Johnson, Amgen and Pfizer.
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If the U.S. can help Japan reform its drug pricing controls, both countries stand to benefit.
Eli Lilly and Regeneron are leading the push to treat congenital deafness with gene therapies, seeking a piece of a potential billion-dollar market and banking on local delivery and the small amount of drug required to overcome key safety concerns.
FDA
The FDA’s Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher program, unveiled in June 2025, is “shrouded in secrecy,” Democratic representative Jake Auchincloss said last month, as regulatory and biopharma leaders try to decode the criteria for investigational or approved drugs to receive a voucher.
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While requests by government officials for anonymity when speaking to the media are nothing new, the practice attracts more scrutiny when the Department for Health and Human Services has pledged a commitment to “radical transparency.”
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Mounjaro and Zepbound combined for $11.7 billion in the fourth quarter, which beat analyst consensus of $10.6 billion.
Novartis will still be on the lookout for early-stage deals under $2 billion, and later-stage agreements around a product that could reach the market within five years, CEO Vas Narasimhan said Wednesday.
Pfizer announces the first data from its Metsera-acquired pipeline just ahead of its earnings call, where analysts pressed execs for more details; Merck and Roche also released Q4 and full year earnings, with Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and others reporting Wednesday; REGENXBIO hits a regulatory snag ahead of its upcoming PDUFA; more.
Investor enthusiasm and evolving FDA pathways are accelerating rare disease drug development, with ultrarare conditions like MPS II moving into the spotlight.
IPO
Nearly 100 biotechs went public amid the industry’s IPO frenzy in 2021, driven by an influx of pandemic-driven investments. But many of those companies have little to show investors.
U.S. President Donald Trump signed a spending package into law Tuesday that reauthorizes the FDA’s previously stalled rare pediatric disease priority review voucher program, among other initiatives, while ending a three-day partial government shutdown.
Novo Nordisk beat analyst expectations for the fourth quarter, but the result was overshadowed by softened expectations for this year.
Analysts parsed the limited data available for Pfizer’s obesity candidate on the pharma’s fourth-quarter earnings call Tuesday, looking for any nugget of additional context.
In its 2025 full year and fourth-quarter earnings call, Merck executives touted the merits of recent deals and what CEO Robert Davis called “probably the broadest and widest pipeline we’ve had in years.”
With data from a mid-stage trial showing weight loss of up to 12.3% at 28 weeks in patients treated with PF’3944, “Pfizer is moving full speed into obesity clinical development,” BMO Capital Markets said Tuesday.