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Alternatives to opioids are desperately needed to better treat moderate to severe acute pain, but to date, we’ve seen few novel analgesics hit the market.
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IPO
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.
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FROM OUR EDITORS
Read our takes on the biggest stories happening in the industry.
FDA
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.
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Through its online pharmacy LillyDirect, Eli Lilly announced Tuesday it will allow patients to purchase single-dose vials of Zepbound—without the autoinjector—at a 50% discount or more versus other incretin obesity treatments.
The number of patients who will be eligible for Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster GLP-1 under new Medicare Part D plan guidelines will vary depending on how cardiovascular disease is defined, according to researchers.
Mirroring fellow pharmacy benefit manager CVS Caremark, Cigna’s Express Scripts is taking Humira off its major commercial formularies starting next year and focusing on more affordable biosimilar options.
With the FDA’s rejection of Ordspono in March, Monday’s green light from the European Commission marks the first approval worldwide and the first regulatory victory for Regeneron’s bispecific antibody platform.
Belgium-based biopharma UCB is selling its Chinese neurology and allergy business to Singapore asset management firm CBC Group and Abu Dhabi investment company Mubadala.
The Switzerland layoffs are the latest in Bayer’s 2024 workforce reductions, which already include 1,500 people and nearly half of the executive leadership team.
IPO
MBX Biosciences follows Bicara Therapeutics and Zenas Biopharma, which also announced last week their respective plans to go public in a potential boost to the recent slump in the IPO market.
Tome Biosciences, a gene editing startup that launched in late 2023 with $213 million in funding, will eliminate 131 positions in November, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act notice.
Johnson & Johnson’s proposed changes to the hospital drug discount program are inconsistent with the federal statute, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration.
In this deep dive BioSpace dissects the global obesity and diabetes markets along with the growing pipelines that aim to serve them.