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The obesity market and Most Favored Nation drug pricing were among the topics de jour at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference last week, while smaller biotechs sought to assure investors that their regulatory ducks are in a row; Novo Nordisk’s oral obesity pill got off to a hot start while the FDA delayed a decision on Eli Lilly’s investigational offering; and SpyGlass Pharma and AgomAb Therapeutics join the 2026 IPO club.
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Henry Gosebruch, who has $3.5 billion in capital to deploy, is thinking broad as he steers the decades-old biotech out of years of turmoil. 
Following the hard-won success of early anti-amyloid drugs, a new generation of Alzheimer’s modalities—from tau-targeting gene silencers to blood-brain barrier delivery platforms—is entering the pipeline to anchor future combination therapies.
Speaking on the sidelines of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, Novo business development executive Tamara Darsow said the company is gunning for obesity and diabetes assets.
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It doesn’t matter how many times you have traversed Union Square; no one knows which way is north, or where The Westin is in relation to the Ritz Carlton. A Verizon outage brought that into focus on Wednesday.
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FDA
Since July, several biotechs have been forced to pivot as previous agreements with the FDA around evidence required for approval were reversed, a phenomenon that, according to experts, could portend a more restrictive regulator.
The regulator has received reports that a group of patients treated with Adzynma had neutralizing antibodies against the protein the therapy replaces.
After revoking Sarepta’s award in July and awarding one to Krystal last month, the FDA’s platform technology designation program appears to be back on track. These six biotechs could be on the regulator’s radar.
While expressing disappointment, William Blair analysts were unsurprised by the Phase II failure, having assigned the VISTA study a high level of risk given the “mixed” performance of a similar drug in a prior multiple sclerosis study.
After GSK subsidiary Tesaro filed a lawsuit Thursday claiming that AnaptysBio breached “certain requirements” under their 2014 license agreement involving GSK’s Jemperli, Anaptys responded Friday morning.
Amid an aggressive savings push, Moderna has cut three assets and taken on a loan to increase “flexibility.”
A new analysis from Jefferies shows that drugs receiving breakthrough designations sail through the regulatory process more quickly, on top of frequently winning approval.
The drugmaker’s dominance of the obesity market is fueling predictions that years of growth lie ahead.
Aspen is now also considering the possibility of an initial public offering next year in an effort to bring its cell therapy to the market.
The nod brings Bayer face-to-face in the market with Boehringer Ingelheim and AstraZeneca, each of which has its own HER2 blocker for non-small cell lung cancer.