News
The 2025 meeting of the American Society of Hematology features some of the newest developments in blood cancers and rare diseases.
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Novo Nordisk goes “on the offensive” following Trump deal that also included rival Eli Lilly, putting an exclamation point on rapidly declining GLP-1 drug prices. Experts say the unusual situation makes it hard to predict what’s next.
Drug candidates don’t usually move among Big Pharma, but these five biotechs helped facilitate such hand-offs, scooping up assets from one pharma on the cheap before being bought out for billions by another.
A week into his tenure as head of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, experts agree that Rick Pazdur is the “ideal fit” to stabilize the agency. And, according to one ex-FDA official, if his CBER counterpart Vinay Prasad tries to supersede Pazdur’s authority, “there will be hell to pay.”
Job Trends
While the job market is tough for life sciences professionals right now, it won’t always be. Employers must continue striving to create fulfilling work environments, as the market won’t always be in their favor, say biopharma execs.
FROM OUR EDITORS
Read our takes on the biggest stories happening in the industry.
With Novo Holdings’ $16.5 billion buyout of Catalent being reviewed by regulators, what work the contract drug manufacturer may or may not be performing for Eli Lilly remains a point of contention.
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Following Novo Nordisk’s price cuts for its own GLP-1 medicines, Eli Lilly is offering discounts for the obesity drug purchased through LillyDirect. Both pharmas recently struck a deal with the White House for cheaper prices via the yet-to-be-launched TrumpRx.
Protego Biopharma is advancing a small-molecule drug that helps light chain proteins fold correctly, in turn addressing the underlying biological cause of AL amyloidosis.
The centerpiece of the deal is the in vivo editor TSRA-196, which in preclinical studies has shown robust editing at SERPINA1, the locus linked to alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency.
The alleged deaths were detected by the FDA’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, reports from which “generally cannot be used to determine” causation or even contribution, according to the agency.
If approved, Ascendis’ TransCon CNP would become the second therapy for achondroplasia, challenging BioMarin’s Voxzogo.
As bispecifics, ADCs, protein degraders, and AI-designed mini-proteins move into the clinic, discovery teams face a new bottleneck: engineering and producing molecules whose complexity challenges conventional workflows.
As big pharmas including Takeda and Novo Nordisk flee the cell therapy space and smaller biotechs shutter their operations, these players are sticking around to take the modality as far as it can go.
The FDA’s docket in December includes decisions for two big biologic franchises: BMS’s Breyanzi and Amgen’s Uplizna.
This year has seen the approval of several first-in-class therapies for HAE, but in a fragmented space, experts question whether they will be enough to net their developers a significant share of the entrenched market.
Analysts at Guggenheim Partners expect Voyxact to see “broad commercial uptake” given its relatively broad label compared with previous accelerated approvals for IgA nephropathy.