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Lilly Lifts Its Forecast by More Than $5 Billion as Volume Outruns Falling Prices
Eli Lilly's third-quarter revenue jumped 39% to $24.4 billion, and it now expects $91 billion to $92 billion for 2026, up from $85 billion to $87 billion. The engine is volume, not price: Lilly sold 53% more medicine while the prices it actually collected fell 15%. Outside the US, prices fell 29%, mainly because Mounjaro joined China's national list of reimbursed drugs. Mounjaro alone brought in $10.7 billion. The soft spot is Foundayo, the pill Lilly is launching globally, at $184 million for the quarter. Two caveats: about $900 million of revenue was one-time, including $410 million in final Jardiance milestones, and earnings-per-share guidance slipped because of charges for drugs Lilly bought, mainly from AtaiBeckley and Curevo.
Why it matters: Lilly is showing that Mounjaro and Zepbound can be a volume business, where lower prices open bigger markets faster than they shrink revenue. Anyone betting on a pill to take over should note how modest Foundayo's sales still are.
Eli Lilly (SEC filing) →Clinical & Regulatory
Kymera's Pill Cut an Immune Master Switch by 90% or More in Healthy Volunteers
KT-579 is an oral degrader, a drug built to destroy a protein rather than just block it. Its target, IRF5, is a genetically validated master regulator of immunity. In a Phase 1 trial in healthy volunteers, several dose levels cut IRF5 in blood by a median of 90% or more, with safety comparable to placebo. Next up is LUMORA, a roughly 30-patient lupus study starting by early 2027.
Kymera Therapeutics →Bristol Myers Drops an $80 Million Brain Drug After One Look at Phase 1
Bristol Myers Squibb is ending work on PRX019, a neurodegeneration antibody it licensed from Prothena in 2024 for $80 million upfront, after reviewing Phase 1 data in healthy adults. It hasn't said what it saw. The cut landed alongside a solid quarter, with revenue up 7% to $13.1 billion. Its other Prothena drug, the Alzheimer's antibody moponetug, continues, with Phase 2 data due in the first half of next year.
BioSpace →Deals & Money
Dren Bio Raises $350 Million to Push a Rare Blood Cancer Drug Toward Market
Dren Bio, which sold an earlier drug to Sanofi for $600 million upfront, closed an oversubscribed $350 million round, one of the year's largest private biotech financings. The money funds late-stage development and launch preparation for dibotatug, an antibody that targets CD94, in two rare blood cancers. Juvia Group and Lightspeed Venture Partners co-led.
BioSpace →Aspen's $140 Million IPO Bets on Rebuilding Parkinson's Patients' Own Dopamine Cells
Aspen Neuroscience priced at $15 a share, the low end of its range, raising $140.6 million. It turns each patient's skin cells into stem cells, then into precursors of the dopamine neurons Parkinson's destroys, given once. It's in a Phase 1/2a trial. Bambusa Therapeutics priced its IPO the same day, making 29 US biotech listings this year, the most since 2021.
BioPharma Dive →BioMarin Pays $70 Million Upfront for a Fabry Drug That Could Skip the IV
BioMarin licensed LA-GLA, a long-acting enzyme replacement therapy for the rare disorder Fabry disease, from Korea's GC Biopharma and Hanmi for $70 million upfront and up to $475 million in all. Standard enzyme therapies need IV infusions every two weeks; LA-GLA is designed as an injection under the skin. It's only in Phase 1/2, but it bolsters a Fabry franchise BioMarin expanded by buying Amicus.
Korea Biomedical Review →Policy
Drug Middlemen Must Finally Show Employers Where the Money Goes
The Labor Department finalized a rule requiring pharmacy benefit managers, the middlemen that run drug benefits, to tell large self-insured employers what they collect: drugmaker rebates, other payments and 'spread,' the gap between what a plan pays and what the pharmacy gets. Disclosures come at contract time and every six months, starting July 2027. Regulators project $22 billion in savings over 10 years; PBM groups say the department lacks the authority.
BioPharma Dive →