News
The Denton site is part of a network of manufacturing plants Novartis is building across the U.S. to make cancer drugs that must be shipped to patients quickly.
FEATURED STORIES
LB Pharma needed $350 million to advance a promising schizophrenia candidate at a time when the biotech markets were locked up tight. Fortunately, it wasn’t CEO Heather Turner’s first rodeo.
Rare disease drug developers struggle to survive in a biopharma investment market that prioritizes large patient populations. Initiatives like the Orphan Therapeutics Accelerator are attempting to solve what CEO Craig Martin says is not a science problem, but a math problem.
Eli Lilly’s win in a head-to-head trial drove Novo Nordisk’s market cap to pre-Wegovy levels not long after the victor became the first pharma company to top a $1 trillion valuation. It seems one company can do no right, while the other can do no wrong.
FROM OUR EDITORS
Read our takes on the biggest stories happening in the industry.
Following the FDA’s refusal to review Moderna’s investigational mRNA flu vaccine last week, Commissioner Marty Makary faced questions from the U.S. president about the agency’s handling of vaccines. It’s a clear signal that the tension long brewing at the drug regulator has now gone all the way to the top.
THE LATEST
What China is accomplishing in R&D “has implications for everyone playing in the R&D or innovation world,” McKinsey’s Fangning Zhang says.
The agency’s sweeping rollout and staff challenge underscore rising momentum behind agentic AI: advanced, multiagent systems now fueling early pilots in medical writing, patient engagement and regulatory workflows across the industry.
Although still in Phase I, Wave Life Sciences’ injectable RNA weight loss treatment achieved results that impressed analysts, with 4% fat reduction after three months, beating Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide at a similar time point.
The 2025 meeting of the American Society of Hematology features some of the newest developments in blood cancers and rare diseases.
Dyne’s exon-skipping therapy zeleciment rostudirsen resulted in an approximately sevenfold increase in dystrophin levels at six months and elicited functional improvements that are the “best ever” for this treatment class, Stifel analysts said.
GSK and Ideaya first linked up in 2020 to advance novel therapies for solid tumors. It is unclear why the pharma terminated the partnership.
Analysts at Jefferies see blockbuster potential in zorevunersen in Dravet syndrome, with sales potentially reaching $1 billion to $4 billion.
The pharmaceutical supply chain and device development have become intricately linked. Harmonizing formulation development with drug delivery device design—and leveraging a single‐vendor ecosystem—can deliver significant time, cost, and regulatory advantages for US‑focused drug products, according to industry experts.
As the FDA unveils a parade of initiatives aimed at accelerating drug development for rare diseases, experts appeal for a consistent approval process that will support and further catalyze momentum.
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.