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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.
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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.
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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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FDA
Katherine Szarama, who has served as Prasad’s deputy at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research since December, joins a long list of temporary leaders at the Department of Health and Human Services.
On the heels of several big buys, Merck still has eyes for M&A—particularly in the oncology, immunology and cardiometabolic spaces—as the quest continues for a candidate that can top Keytruda.
Foundayo became available on April 9 and has already reached 20,000 patients as Eli Lilly builds its marketing machine for the weight loss pill.
UniQure plans to submit AMT-130 to the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency in the third quarter of 2026 based on Phase 1/2 data showing a 75% slowing of disease—the same data the FDA has deemed unacceptable for a biologics license application.
After delaying a late-stage readout last year due to “irregularities” at certain study sites, pivotal data for Bristol Myers Squibb’s Cobenfy appear set to arrive later this year.
Eli Lilly’s $19.8 billion revenue for the first quarter could have been higher if not for declining prices for key medicines like Zepbound, Mounjaro and Taltz.
The patient death occurred outside the U.S. and was deemed unrelated to Newron Pharmaceuticals’ investigational schizophrenia drug.
While AstraZeneca has discontinued work on four assets—including one in asthma and another in acromegaly—the pharma has also elected to take forward a bispecific antibody that destroys the EGFR protein.
Over the last two years, Alector has suffered three setbacks for its neurodegenerative disease pipeline, often forcing the company to downsize.
Amylin drugs have become the next big thing in obesity. Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks, understandably, thinks his rivals don’t have a chance for one key reason.