News

IPO
After debuting on the public markets with $256.3 million and raking in an additional $472 million, Veradermics has emerged as one of biotech’s biggest post-IPO standouts. CEO Reid Waldman credits the weight loss craze for establishing consumer-driven channels.
FEATURED STORIES
Last month, the FDA launched TrialBlazer, intended to streamline the IND path and bring early clinical trials and medical innovation home to the U.S. It’s a start, but new agency leadership must see it through.
FDA
Significant leadership instability at the FDA—compounded by continued workforce attrition—led to a slight slowdown in overall regulatory productivity in the first half of this year, but the agency has been catching up of late.
Congressional letters sent to the CEOs of Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Merck, BMS and AbbVie this week voicing concerns about the pharmas’ clinical trials in China highlight an ongoing discrepancy in how government and industry think about the rise of the Asian country’s biotech industry.
FROM OUR EDITORS
Read our takes on the biggest stories happening in the industry.
If cell and gene therapy makers are going to achieve their mission to improve patients’ lives, the industry must come together to share information across stakeholders, from regulators to manufacturers to payers.
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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.
The second half finished strong after two tumultuous years. What will 2026 bring for the biotech 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.
Insmed pointed to a strong placebo response as the reason for the trial’s failure.
With zasocitinib, Takeda is looking to challenge Bristol Myers Squibb’s kinase inhibitor Sotyktu, for which the Japanese pharma is running a head-to-head study in plaque psoriasis. Takeda expects to file for zasocitinib’s FDA approval next year.
The filing comes as Novo fights tooth-and-nail with rival Lilly to regain its footing at the top of the weight loss market.
In this episode of Denatured, Jennifer Smith-Parker speaks to Kenneth Galbraith, CEO of Zymeworks and Josh Smiley, president and COO of Zai Lab, about how renewed confidence is driving biotech entering 2026.