Annalee Armstrong headshot

Annalee Armstrong

Senior Editor

Annalee Armstrong is an award-winning biopharma journalist covering the business of drug development. She has been a journalist for more than 18 years, covering the pharmaceutical and biotech industry for the last eight.

Annalee began her career at small newspapers across Western Canada. During the assignment of a lifetime, the Yukon Quest Sled Dog Race, she met her husband in Alaska and eventually moved to the U.S. Since then, Annalee has covered energy, environmental regulations, healthcare and biopharma. Prior to BioSpace, Annalee was senior editor for Fierce Biotech, where she received several awards for her writing and editing. She lives in Ottawa, Ontario, with her husband, two wild boys, an anxious Rhodesian Ridgeback and an indifferent tabby cat.

She is senior editor at BioSpace and curates the Biopharm Executive newsletter every Wednesday. You can reach her at  annalee.armstrong@biospace.com. Follow her on LinkedIn.

Policy uncertainty is hampering the growth of U.S. biotech as China rises thanks to carefully planned investment in the industry, experts said during a BioSpace webinar.
The seven proposals in the Bio Advance plan include easing clinical trial starts, boosting manufacturing and establishing a new White House office to coordinate the government’s biotech policy.
The Phase 3 results help clarify the safety profile of Zealand and Boehringer Ingelheim’s survodutide, but analysts do not think the drug will find utility beyond patients with liver-related risk factors.
A Phase 3 trial showed that Johnson & Johnson and Protagonist Therapeutics’ oral therapy Icotyde improved psoriatic arthritis symptoms but AbbVie’s injectable is likely to hold court based on higher efficacy, analysts say.
M&A
Unnatural Products has risen from founder Joshua Schwochert’s garage to an acquisition deal, valued at up to $1.15 billion, to join argenx.
At the American Heart Association conference, investigators were supportive of further studying Novo’s IL-6 inhibitor ziltivekimab in patients with less severe cardiovascular and kidney disease.
While Moderna preps an entry to the oncology market next year with a personalized cancer vaccine, COVID sales are holding steady with several other vaccine launches underway around the world.
Sarepta Therapeutics’ newly minted CEO Michael Severino laid out his path to returning the muscular dystrophy therapy maker to the forefront of the rapidly expanding market.
Personalized cancer vaccines are getting closer to market. Merck and Moderna just showed successful manufacturing in a large Phase 3 trial, proving they can deliver the goods.
Pent-up demand for the new pancreatic cancer therapy Rasonque helped RevMed soar past analysts’ sales expectations and reach 5,000 patients in the third quarter.
AstraZeneca has apparently made a $10 billion bid to acquire Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, an offer William Blair suspects will not be the last for the hot ticket metabolic biotech.
Speaking on third quarter earnings calls this week, Novo and Pfizer’s CEOs see little change to their Most Favored Nation drug pricing deals, which were signed with the Trump administration last year.
Novo CEO Mike Maziar Doustdar insists that his company is ahead of fierce rival Eli Lilly as oral Wegovy rises to 8 million total prescriptions since its January launch.
Since Pfizer already owns a tick-borne encephalitis franchise in Europe, the region is a natural first step for the pharma’s upcoming Lyme disease vaccine.
The majority of the large pharmas have now reported third quarter earnings—spoiler alert: Eli Lilly made more money than anyone expected. Plus, the FDA dropped another initiative aimed at accelerating rare disease treatments; HHS greenlights the compounding of six unapproved peptides; and uniQure’s embattled gene therapy for Huntington’s disease has finally been accepted for review.