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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.

While innovative medicine supported Johnson & Johnson’s “in line” earnings for the third quarter of 2026, investors were disappointed to see older medicines carrying the bag.
Bellwether Johnson & Johnson will kick off the third quarter earnings reporting period on Tuesday, with analysts searching for news on business development, launch execution and more.
For the second time in a week, Zealand Pharma’s weight loss pipeline has delivered mixed results, this time in a Phase 2 trial for the Roche-partnered asset petrelintide.
The Takeda spinout showed that a high dose of solengepras can shorten the periods during which difficult Parkinson’s disease symptoms like involuntary movements and sleepiness.
New data for Genmab and AbbVie’s bispecific antibody Epkinly wowed analysts and could set the partners up for an expanded approval in diffuse large B cell lymphoma; deals have flowed steadily this week, including Novartis’ nearly $8 billion bet on mRNA drugs with China’s Abogen Biosciences; and could Sarepta Therapeutics turn things around from last year’s annus horribilis?
VAX-31 beat Pfizer and Merck’s established pneumococcal conjugate vaccines in a Phase 3 trial, exceeding investors’ most ambitious scenario and setting Vaxcyte up to challenge the Big Pharmas in a market worth $8 billion.
Bristol Myers Squibb will soon release Phase 3 data for admilparant that could make or break Contineum Therapeutics’ rival product. But reports of a death due to liver injury in the pharma’s program have caused some unease about the drug class.
FDA
Summit Therapeutics scores a $2 billion equity investment from AstraZeneca to support ivonescimab’s late-stage development; uniQure crashes after four-year data from its Huntington’s disease gene therapy failed to impress; Kyverna Therapeutics brings new light to a struggling CAR T space in autoimmune disease.
Last year, 11 major M&A deals were signed with women-led biotechs. The industry is nowhere near on track to meet that bar for 2026.
Investors looking for more transformative business development at Novo will have to wait, but a new partnership with China’s Hengrui Pharma adds a new weekly oral option to the Danish pharma’s early pipeline.
Nektar Therapeutics has been awarded $90 million in damages after a jury sided with the biotech, which had accused Big Pharma Eli Lilly of “botching” an analysis of their formerly partnered autoimmune drug.
Analysts were keen to see a new modality compete with Roche’s approved drug Lucentis in the late-stage trial but new safety issues could complicate the future for Merck’s candidate.
The weekly insulin Onswik will now be available to U.S. patients after initial approvals in Europe, Mexico and Japan.
After imeroprubart failed to demonstrate sufficient efficacy in lupus during a Phase 2b trial, Immunovant is moving on from the indication and looking to other high priority programs for the drug in neurology, endocrinology and rheumatology.
Tech darling Enveda has raised a total of $845 million in the past six years. The latest funding round is intended to pave the way for an IPO someday.