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Analysts called the approval a much-needed win for Novo Nordisk, but warned that the company could struggle to grow sales once rival drugs come to market.
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The second half finished strong after two tumultuous years. What will 2026 bring for the biotech sector?
Policy initiatives have come fast and furious at the FDA this year. While guidances on rare diseases and vaccines have consumed most of the ink, policy shifts aimed at improving FDA efficiencies and reshoring U.S. manufacturing also got some attention. Here, BioSpace rounds up more than a dozen initiatives relevant to the biopharma industry.
After 27 years in business, Cytokinetics hopes to pit its own cardiac myosin inhibitor against one it initially developed—now owned by Bristol Myers Squibb—in a market worth billions. Aficamten has a PDUFA date of Dec. 26.
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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 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.
While the approval of Leqembi Iqlik bodes well for Biogen and Eisai’s planned application for a subcutaneous induction regimen next year, its financial impact remains “uncertain,” as potentially higher revenues from the injection could be offset by steeper costs of production, according to Jefferies.
While Eli Lilly’s orforglipron is full speed ahead for a regulatory filing this year, the pharma is also pushing forward with one more Phase II study of naperiglipron, which uses the same scaffold as Pfizer’s failed obesity drugs danuglipron and lotiglipron.
Aside from the rare disease market, Novo Nordisk also scored a key regulatory win last month for its blockbuster GLP-1 drug Wegovy, which can now be used to treat patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis.
After a demoralizing period punctuated by the withdrawal of one of the few marketed therapies for ALS, investment in new biotechs, state-backed collaborative initiatives and buzz at BIO2025 suggest a new day in drug development for one of medicine’s most intractable diseases.
With a flurry of recent Big Pharma investment in radiopharmaceutical therapeutics, the FDA issued draft guidance last month in a move former FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn sees as the regulator “trying to get ahead on a new set of therapy that they see becoming very important for cancer.”
While trade groups hail the executive order as a national health security opportunity, analysts warn that production costs could go up in the near term.