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Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk plan to announce new drug pricing deals with the White House, including for their weight loss medicines, in return for Medicare coverage of their products, Endpoints News reported on Tuesday. Under the deal, the companies would offer the lowest dose of their respective obesity drugs at $149 per month, the report said, citing sources familiar with the matter. The agreement can be announced this week, it added. Patients in the U.S. currently pay the most for prescription medicines, often nearly three times more than in other developed nations, and President Donald Trump has been pressuring drugmakers to lower their prices to what patients pay elsewhere. In return, the drugs would gain coverage under Medicare, a federal health insurance program in the U.S. for people aged 65 and older or who have disabilities, which would open up a huge new set of reimbursement, according to the report. Lilly and Novo did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Wegovy-maker Novo Nordisk lowered its full-year profit forecast on Wednesday in an early blow to the Danish drugmaker's new CEO amid a deep restructuring drive to claw back lost ground in a fierce obesity drug market battle. CEO Mike Doustdar, who took the helm in August, said the lower guidance was due to "the lower growth expectations for our GLP-1 treatments." "We aim to accelerate on all fronts to be able to compete better in dynamic and increasingly competitive markets," Doustdar said in a statement. Novo Nordisk said it now expects full-year operating profit - measured in local currencies - growing between 4% and 7% in 2025, compared with its earlier forecast of between 10% and 16%. The company expects sales growth in local currencies of between 8% and 11% this year, compared with its previous 8%-14% range, it added. Novo Nordisk said third-quarter sales rose 5% to 75.0 billion Danish crowns ($11.71 billion), compared with 76.2 billion forecast by analysts in a poll gathered by the company. Sales grew 11% measured in local currencies, which eliminates exchange rate fluctuations. The rise in sales in local currency terms, which has slowed sharply in the last year as competition has risen from rival Eli Lilly and...

Drug developer Compass Pathways said on Tuesday it is pulling forward the expected launch timing of its experimental psilocybin-based depression therapy by 9 to 12 months. The decision follows the completion of enrollment for a late-stage study for the psychedelic-based therapy, COMP360, as well as a positive meeting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on strategies for its marketing application, including a potential rolling submission. The experimental therapy called COMP360 is based on the psychedelic compound called psilocybin and is designed as a short-term, episodic alternative to daily antidepressants. The company is testing the therapy in patients with treatment-resistant depression, a condition in which patients do not respond adequately to at least two different treatments. In June, data from a late-stage study showed the therapy reduced the severity of depression symptoms in a closely watched study, but fell short of market expectations. Wall Street analysts, however, said the data indicated that COMP360 might get approved.

Novo Nordisk and Pfizer have revised their bids for Metsera, the obesity drug developer said on Tuesday. Novo's revised offer brings the deal value to about $10 billion, while Pfizer is now willing to shell out $8.1 billion. The revised bids come as both companies are engaged in a public dispute to acquire Metsera. Pfizer has filed two lawsuits against Metsera, its board, and Novo Nordisk. The first lawsuit, filed on Friday, claims Novo's bid breaches Pfizer's merger agreement and seeks to bypass antitrust review. Pfizer is asking a court to block Metsera from terminating the deal, with a hearing set for later on Tuesday. As per Novo's new offer, Metsera is also eligible to receive an additional $24.00 per share in cash, up from $22.50, based on development and regulatory approval milestones

Merck said on Tuesday that it has entered into an agreement to receive funds managed by Blackstone Life Sciences for $700 million to develop an experimental cancer therapy. Under the terms of the agreement, Blackstone will fund a portion of the development costs to test sac-TMT, an experimental antibody-drug conjugate. Antibody-drug conjugates are designed to deliver an anti-cancer drug more precisely to malignant cells, causing less damage to healthy cells than chemotherapy. The payment is expected to be made throughout 2026, the companies said. Blackstone is eligible to receive low-to-mid single-digit royalties on net sales of sac-TMT across all approved indications.

AstraZeneca shareholders approved a direct listing of the drugmaker's shares on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, giving it access to a deeper capital pool. The drugmaker said 99.36% of votes cast in a general meeting favoured the proposal. The company needed at least 75% of votes for the resolution to pass. AstraZeneca, London's most valuable company, outlined plans for a much-anticipated U.S. direct listing in September, replacing its existing American depositary receipts on the Nasdaq with ordinary shares on the NYSE, while retaining its London and Stockholm listings. The U.S. market accounts for more than 40% of AstraZeneca's revenue, making it critical to CEO Pascal Soriot's growth strategy and future outlook amid mounting political scrutiny. AstraZeneca Chair Michel Demare said in a statement that the shareholder vote in favour of the board's proposal showed strong investor confidence in the company's move to streamline its listing across London, Stockholm and New York. He said the harmonised listing structure would give AstraZeneca greater flexibility to tap global capital markets, particularly in the U.S., as it continues to expand in high-growth regions. While analysts and policymakers had expressed relief that the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker's plans did not include ditching its London listing altogether, there are still concerns...

Eli Lilly said on Monday it plans to build a new $3 billion manufacturing plant in the Netherlands to expand the production capacity for its keenly watched experimental weight-loss pill, orforglipron, and other oral medicines. Lilly, the world's most valuable pharmaceutical company by market capitalization, has invested billions of dollars in recent months to scale up the production of orforglipron. The company competes with Danish rival Novo Nordisk to launch the pill and solidify its lead in the rapidly expanding obesity treatment market. Lilly said the Dutch facility will strengthen its global supply chain and expand the capacity for its growing portfolio of oral medications, mainly in cardiometabolic health and obesity, neuroscience, cancer treatment, as well as immunology. Shares of the Indianapolis-based drugmaker were up 2.5% following the announcement. The facility will be equipped with advanced technologies such as paperless manufacturing and AI-driven real-time analytics "to deliver medicines faster with higher quality and more reliably to people around the world," CEO David Ricks said. Speaking at a press conference discussing the announcement, Ricks said the Netherlands was chosen for the site partly due to its proximity to the European Medicines Agency as well as the availability of skilled and multilingual workforce. The plant, located in Leiden...

Germany's BioNTech on Monday lifted its 2025 revenue guidance after receiving initial payments from its new partner Bristol Myers Squibb in a cancer immunotherapy alliance that seeks to challenge Merck's best-selling Keytruda. BioNTech, Pfizer's partner on COVID-19 vaccines, said it was projecting full-year revenue of 2.6 billion euros ($3.03 billion) to 2.8 billion euros, up from a previous guidance range of 1.7 billion to 2.2 billion euros. Earlier this year, Bristol agreed to pay up to $11.1 billion in the partnership deal over time, depending on achievements. BioNTech said on Monday that the partners extended their clinical trial programme for the cancer drug in question, pumitamig, during the third quarter and would add more trials by next year. The German biotech firm said third-quarter revenue gained 22% to 1.52 billion euros. BioNTech is pivoting its focus to cancer drugs, which are expected to drive future growth of the company, as revenue from its COVID-19 vaccine steadily decline from their pandemic era highs.

-Novo Nordisk's late bid to hijack Pfizer's takeover of U.S. obesity biotech Metsera marks an aggressive shift from the Danish drugmaker as it seeks to regain ground in the weight-loss drug market under a new CEO and board. Novo, the drugmaker behind blockbuster weight-loss drug Wegovy and diabetes treatment Ozempic, launched a bid on Thursday for Metsera valuing the firm at some $9 billion and crashing Pfizer's deal for the firm announced in September. The move, after Novo had appeared to have been beaten out, comes a week after the Danish firm's top shareholder dramatically took control of the company's board, criticizing the old leadership for moving too slowly in the weight-loss drug race against main rival Eli Lilly in the lucrative U.S. market. "We asked them to become more aggressive and ambitious," said Mikael Bak, head of the Danish Shareholders' Association which has around 17,000 members, most of them investors in Novo. "This is a signal down that way. But it's hard for us to say if it is the right thing to do." 'DESIRE AND WISH TO WIN' Novo has lost ground in the $150 billion weight-loss drug market to Lilly, whose rival drugs Zepbound and Mounjaro have the clinical edge over Wegovy...

Gilead Sciences said on Thursday its HIV drug sales rose 4% to $5.3 billion in the third quarter including $39 million for its new prevention drug Yeztugo, helping to boost its profit. Overall product sales, however, fell 2% to $7.3 billion due to lower COVID-19 and cancer cell therapy sales. Gilead shares closed down a fraction and fell 1% to $117 in after-hours trading. Wall Street expected sales of Yeztugo, which has an annual U.S. list price of about $28,000, at $37.5 million, according to LSEG. The drug is a twice-yearly injection approved by U.S. regulators in June to prevent HIV in adults and adolescents at high risk of contracting the deadly infection. Sales of the new HIV prevention drug were in line with estimates, but fell short of "growing expectations," RBC Capital Markets analyst Brian Abrahams said in a research note. "We are really pleased with the progress of the Yeztugo launch," Gilead CEO Daniel O'Day said in an interview, noting that 75% of U.S. payers have agreed to cover the drug, and the company expects that to increase to 90% by mid-2026. CVS Health, which runs the largest U.S. pharmacy benefit manager, has still not added Yeztugo to its commercial plans due to...