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Obesity took center stage on the first day of the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, with industry frontrunners Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk providing supply chain, regulatory and pricing updates.
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Heightened diligence standards and longer decision timelines for early-stage startups slowed venture activity last year, J.P. Morgan found in a report published ahead of the bank’s annual healthcare conference in San Francisco.
The prevalence of serious inflammatory safety issues such as cytokine release syndrome and immune effector cell–associated neurotoxicity syndrome limits the reach of these transformative cancer therapies.
After greenlighting 56 novel therapeutics in 2025, four notable applications continue to await the agency’s action after being delayed from the fourth quarter last year.
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With five CDER leaders in one year and regulatory proposals coming “by fiat,” the FDA is only making it more difficult to bring therapies to patients.
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The small molecule drug, acquired by Jazz Pharmaceuticals in its $935 million Chimerix pick-up this spring, is intended for relapsed adult and pediatric patients with H3 K27M mutations.
The German giant has already trimmed more than 10,000 employees since initiating a massive restructuring initiative in July 2023. Bayer said even more cuts are coming as it weathers up-and-down sales across its portfolio.
Terns, once a rising star in obesity and the MASH space, will refocus on cancer and partner out a handful of obesity assets.
Maziar Mike Doustdar, who was named as Novo Nordisk’s new CEO last week, spoke on a second quarter earnings call of reallocating resources to the company’s “main core” of metabolic disease.
President Donald Trump plans to start with a “small tariff” on pharmaceutical imports before ramping duties up to 250% within a year and a half.
BioNTech also laid off 63 employees in June in conjunction with the discontinuation of its cell therapy manufacturing operations in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
The Department of Health and Human Services is terminating around $500 million in BARDA contracts associated with mRNA vaccine development, a move that will affect several pharma companies, including Moderna, Pfizer, Sanofi and AstraZeneca.
From tariffs to drug pricing to the FDA, biopharma CEOs find themselves pulled into policy discussions on this year’s second quarter earnings calls.
George Tidmarsh takes over temporarily at CBER following Vinay Prasad’s abrupt departure; Replimmune trial leaders protest rejection reportedly driven by FDA’s top cancer regulator Richard Pazdur; Merck’s $3 billion savings push claims 6,000 jobs; and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla addresses President Donald Trump’s new threats around Most Favored Nation drug pricing.
The regulatory environment is placing extreme pricing pressure on pharmaceutical manufacturers. Their success in the market depends on mounting an agile response.