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Companies have claimed improvements to yield, batch consistency and output while acknowledging the risks and challenges created by the technology.
The mad rush for safe and effective obesity drugs has winners—including Eli Lilly’s Zepbound and Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy—and losers. Here are five molecules that never made it to the market.
While it’s impossible to make apples-to-apples comparisons of the many obesity candidates with so many differences across clinical trials, we at BioSpace are giving it our best shot.
Job Trends
Atara Biotherapeutics’ layoffs could leave the biotech with around 80 employees. The cuts follow news that the FDA rejected Ebvallo, a T cell therapy approved in Europe for a transplant-related blood cancer, and placed a clinical hold on the company’s active drug applications.
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The group of like-named companies that include Novo Holdings and Novo Nordisk—the two tied to a multibillion-dollar buyout of Catalent currently under FTC review—ultimately send proceeds to the Novo Nordisk Foundation, one of the world’s largest charitable foundations.
THE LATEST
It can cure deadly diseases, save long-term healthcare costs and transform lives. But the U.S. insurance system still isn’t ready to pay for it.
IPO
Blank check deals dwindled after a crazy 2021. Now, biotechs are starting to turn to special purpose acquisition companies again as an easy route to the public markets.
IPO
Some of the biggest SPACs from the industry’s pandemic-fueled heyday are no longer on the market.
IPO
After spinning out of BridgeBio in May 2024, BBOT had an eye on another round of fundraising in 2025. A SPAC quickly emerged as the best option.
FDA
Paul Offit, longtime member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee and an outspoken critic of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was recently informed by the Department of Health and Human Services that his services are no longer required.
Vertex Pharmaceuticals commits $45 million upfront to leverage Enlaza Therapeutics’ War-Lock platform to create drug conjugates and T cell engagers for autoimmune diseases and gentler conditioning for sickle cell/beta thalassemia gene-editing therapy Casgevy.
The French giant is gaining access to darovasertib, a small molecule protein kinase C inhibitor already in Phase II/III trials, with rights for the whole world besides the U.S.
Novartis is licensing ARO-SNCA, a preclinical siRNA therapy for synucleinopathies, a group of neurodegenerative disorders including Parkinson’s disease.
The OMass partnership will boost Roche’s strategy in inflammatory bowel diseases, currently led by afimkibart, an anti-TL1A therapy the pharma obtained from its $7.1 billion acquisition of Telavant in 2023.
Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy has been on a winning streak as of late, with a metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis approval last month and prime position in the oral obesity race.