Past Issues
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Gilead just killed its weekly HIV pill after an FDA safety hold
The company that basically owns the HIV market just scrapped a trial that was supposed to be the next big thing in patient convenience. Meanwhile, a lung drug is pulling double duty in a disease it was never designed for, and 8,000 clinical trial sites just went dark in the Middle East.
Lilly drops $7.8B on a sleep drug company most people have never heard of
Big Pharma went on a $13 billion shopping spree on Monday, with Lilly and Biogen each writing massive checks for very different bets. Meanwhile, an entirely new class of genetic medicine just entered the clinic for the first time, and a cancer vaccine startup filed for total liquidation. Buckle up.
J&J paid $16.6B for a heart pump. Two trials just failed.
Johnson & Johnson's crown jewel cardiac device flopped in two major clinical trials, raising hard questions about a $16.6 billion acquisition. Meanwhile, Merck had a very busy week: unveiling a cholesterol pill that could retire the needle and dropping $6.7 billion on an early-stage cancer drug.
Lilly just bet $2.75B that AI can find its next blockbuster drug
Eli Lilly went from quietly licensing AI software to writing a $2.75 billion check to the same company in under three years. Meanwhile, a hypertension drug worked so well on a single dose that it accidentally ruined its own clinical trial. It's been that kind of week in biotech.
A biotech lost half its value over 0.9%. Yes, zero-point-nine.
Wave Life Sciences posted a 14% drop in visceral fat and actually preserved muscle mass. Investors rewarded them by torching 50% of the company's market cap in a single session. Meanwhile, scientists in China made cancer-killing eye drops from pig semen, and somehow that's not even the wildest story today.
The FDA just turned 365 insulin shots into 52. Here's what that means.
The first weekly insulin just got FDA approval, and it might be the biggest shake-up in diabetes care since, well, insulin itself. Meanwhile, a drug class everyone left for dead just showed signs of life, Big Pharma made a major psychedelics bet, and someone is fighting pancreatic cancer with electricity.
The FDA rejected this gene therapy twice. It just got approved anyway.
A gene therapy for a disease that kills 75% of kids before age two finally won FDA approval, but only after being rejected twice for reasons that had nothing to do with whether it works. Meanwhile, Novartis is spending $2 billion to replace its own blockbuster, and Pfizer's Lyme vaccine aced the test but forgot to fill in the right bubble.
The first drug to sneak past the brain's toughest security just got approved
For two decades, kids with Hunter syndrome had a treatment that could fix their organs but couldn't touch their brains. Denali Therapeutics just changed that with the first enzyme therapy to cross the blood-brain barrier, and the implications stretch far beyond one rare disease. Meanwhile, Merck is spending billions to outrun its Keytruda problem, and one biotech learned the hard way what happens when you call your own data "best-in-class."
Merck just dropped $6.7B on a cancer drug with zero revenue
Merck is betting nearly $7 billion on a single cancer drug that hasn't left early-stage trials, and the reason why tells you everything about Big Pharma's looming panic. Meanwhile, Gilead repurposes a cancer weapon for autoimmune disease, the FDA flags a deadly vitamin drain hiding in a common Parkinson's drug, and Sarepta's gene-silencing gambit gets its first human data.
The obesity startup that just slammed the brakes on its entire pipeline
An obesity biotech froze every trial it had after a comprehensive data review raised serious questions about its mechanism. Meanwhile, a war in the Middle East is threatening to disrupt hospital supply chains, and Merck is paying a startup to read your cells' typos like a drug discovery cheat code.
Abbott just wrote a $23B check to kill the colonoscopy
The biggest diagnostics deal of the year just closed, and it's a $23 billion bet that the future of cancer detection fits in a mailbox. Meanwhile, a gene therapy for kids who rarely survive past age two gets a second shot at FDA approval, and a stealth startup claims it can regrow the brain cells that Parkinson's destroys.
This epilepsy drug nearly doubled Wall Street's expectations (stock up 50%)
An epilepsy drug just posted the strongest placebo-adjusted efficacy in pivotal trial history, and the stock responded with a 50% single-day surge. Meanwhile, Pfizer engineered a three-headed antibody to take on a blockbuster worth billions, and Novartis wrote a $2 billion check for a drug with zero clinical data.
Novartis just wrote a $2B check for a drug class everyone left for dead
Novartis dropped $2 billion in cash on a Phase 1/2 breast cancer drug from the one drug class pharma swore off years ago. Meanwhile, biotech's longest-running muscle theory took another beating, and a surgical robot's stapler told surgeons everything was fine when it very much wasn't.
China now runs more CAR-T trials than the country that invented CAR-T
America created one of the most transformative cancer therapies ever made, then watched China build more kitchens, hire more cooks, and serve more patients. Today we unpack how the global biotech balance of power is shifting, plus a century-old syringe maker that just paid $200 million to become something else entirely.
The heart condition that had zero treatments just got its first
A leaky heart valve that's plagued millions of patients finally has a purpose-built fix, and the FDA just greenlit it. Meanwhile, two biotechs watched their stocks evaporate after Phase 3 failures, a polarizing FDA leader walked out the door, and a pill is coming for the injection-dominated psoriasis market.
A daily pill just matched injectable biologics in clearing psoriasis
J&J just got the FDA to approve a once-daily pill that clears psoriasis skin as well as the injectable biologics that have dominated the market for years. No needles, no specialty pharmacies, no excuses. Meanwhile, the FDA itself is looking a little worse for wear after losing 4,000 staffers, and one small biotech just learned that three strikes really does mean you're out.
A cancer drug that wears a disguise just sent a stock up 56%
A tiny biotech's "masked" cancer drug posted jaw-dropping response rates in patients who'd exhausted every option, sending shares soaring roughly 56%. Meanwhile, kidneys are having a moment: three separate stories this week prove nephrology is suddenly the hottest neighborhood in drug development.
One antibody, three targets: the cancer drug that opens locks nobody else can
A Chinese biotech just sent the world's only trispecific antibody into human trials, trying to crack the cold tumor problem that has stumped immunotherapy for a decade. Meanwhile, AI-designed drugs are pulling in record IPO money, a single patient's forearm has been making insulin for 14 months, and the FDA is quietly rewriting the rules for copycat biologics.
Pfizer is racing from a $1.25B licensing deal to Phase 3 launches at unprecedented speed
Pfizer is moving at a pace that makes the rest of pharma look like they're wading through molasses, and it tells you exactly how desperate the oncology arms race has become. Meanwhile, two tiny biotechs are staring down binary moments that will decide whether they survive the year.
China just approved the world's first commercial brain implant. Neuralink didn't.
While Elon Musk's Neuralink is still running clinical trials, a Beijing startup quietly became the first company on Earth to sell a brain-computer interface to hospitals. Meanwhile, Vertex's $5 billion kidney drug bet just paid off in spectacular fashion, and one biotech lost 90% of its value before lunch.
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