Annalee Armstrong headshot

Annalee Armstrong

Senior Editor
High profile failures and long timeframes for revenue have shifted investment away from Phase I, as VCs seek to mitigate risk, Pitchbook said in its 2025 outlook.
Following a 90% drop in share price due to an FDA rejection and a warning letter over Applied Therapeutics’ conduct during a clinical trial, the biotech’s CEO has stepped aside.
Novo Nordisk executives set a high bar for itself when it projected CagriSema could achieve 25% weight loss. When the GLP-1 combo didn’t hit that mark, investors reeled.
The closures follow Novartis’s acquisition of MorphyoSys earlier this year.
The report comes just two days after Novartis announced its own Parkinson’s drug failure.
Following an appeal by the Danish Medicines Agency, the European Union’s drug regulator will review two new studies that have strengthened the link between Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster GLP-1 and a rare eye disease.
BioSpace Senior Editor Annalee Armstrong reflects on the year that was, and what’s to come in 2025.
Suddenly the hottest thing in biopharma isn’t a new indication, disease target or modality—it’s manufacturing, and all of pharma is going to be vying for capacity and talent.
The Novo-Catalent deal now moving ahead highlights unprecedented investment in manufacturing, while also standing out as an exception to the unspoken rule of keeping M&As to less than $5 billion this year.
The FDA has put a stop to U.S. initiation of PepGen’s Phase II trial for its Duchene muscular dystrophy treatment. The company faced the same hurdle for an earlier neuromuscular candidiate in 2023.
Blackstone and Bain Capital are said to be among the final bidders for the Japanese company’s Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma, sources told Reuters Friday.
The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review flagged five drugs whose prices were raised in 2023 with no evidence to support it. Meanwhile, the makers of these drugs have been reporting double-digit sales growth for many of these products.
Pfizer, facing increasing pressure from Novartis, is touting a Phase III win for Ibrance as the first clinical evidence supporting the CDK4/6 inhibitor class’ use in patients with a specific type of breast cancer.
IPO
Around 25 companies have gone public this year, most of them in the early months. Most have tumbled from their original offer price.
By far, the largest acquisition of 2024 was Novo Holdings’ yet-to-be-closed buyout of manufacturer Catalent at $16.5 billion. Outside of that, the leading pharmaceutical companies kept to less than $5 billion per deal.