The obesity drug market has experienced a seismic shift in recent years, with Novo Nordisk's Wegovy (semaglutide) and Eli Lilly's Mounjaro (tirzepatide) revolutionizing the way the condition is treated. 11 April 2025
Pain is good. Or finding non-opioid ways to manage it is good, if Latigo Biotherapeutics’ $150 million March fundraise is anything to go by. 10 April 2025
In this week’s podcast, we welcome Ido Peleg, CEO and Co-Founder of Yonalink, who provides insights into the current and future state of the clinical trial industry. 11 March 2025
In this episode, we’ll take a look at the role of Japanese pharmaceutical groups in the UK, with Jackie Davis, general manager at Astellas Pharma. 24 February 2025
Marking World Cancer Day 2025, this week's Executive Q&A is with Diego Santoro, General Manager & Head of International Region at Gilead and Kite Oncology. Mr Santoro outlines the company’s efforts to expand access to innovative CAR T-cell therapies in the Middle East. 8 February 2025
The 90 million euros ($94 million) raised by Orbis Medicines in a series A round was not January’s biggest venture investment by a long stretch. That honor belonged to the whopping $410 million netted by UK obesity group Verdiva Bio, but what Orbis’s VC round does show is the growing interest in macrocyclics as a drug class. 6 February 2025
Full mergers and acquisitions in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology in 2024 fluctuated throughout the year with hardly any in some months and a significant number in other. But one thing was clear – buyers were shying away from big bets on commercially ready medicines in favor of earlier stage drug developers. 3 January 2025
For many in the life sciences, the year gone by has been marked by volatility across a range of metrics, as political and economic disruptions threaten to upend the standard operating model. 30 December 2024
Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) emerged as a global hero during the COVID-19 pandemic, delivering critical medicines at unprecedented speed and saving millions of lives worldwide. 6 December 2024
Johnson & Johnson has made significant strides in multiple myeloma treatment, with breakthroughs in targeted therapies like CAR-T and bispecific antibodies. At the 2024 ASH meeting, J&J aims to showcase progress, with a goal of achieving a functional cure for multiple myeloma. 28 November 2024
A Feature analyzing M&A, licensing and partnerships in gene editing as CRISPR therapeutics enter the market and present new opportunities for pharma growth. 15 November 2024
Life science investors can be divided into two groups: those who bought Novo Nordisk stock before GLP-1s hit the big time, and those who wish they had. 10 November 2024
Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) represent a transformative class of cancer therapy that combine the targeting ability of antibodies with the cell-killing potential of cytotoxic drugs. 15 October 2024
F2G’s September $100m funding round provides the company with crucial funds to
renavigate approval of its lead drug, olorofim. The substantial financing also
highlights the paucity of novel antifungal products in the clinic. 3 October 2024
As stakeholders in the pharmaceutical industry, we all have a responsibility to ensure life-saving treatments promptly and safely reach patients regardless of where they live. To this end, by integrating early access programs and other less conventional strategies into a company’s business model for drug distribution, patients who are suffering from life-threatening conditions can gain access to needed treatments in regions where there is a lack of drug accessibility, while at the same time offering benefits to pharmaceutical companies. 2 October 2024
A Feature on M&A, licensing and partnerships hotting up in inflammatory diseases as new targets present new opportunities for future growth. 30 September 2024
The upcoming European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2024 should provide a reminder—if it were needed—of the pace of innovation in the development of new medicines for cancer. 10 September 2024
Experts from the International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy (ISCT) told The Pharma Letter last month that the last 12 months had been the most important yet for advances in their field. 10 June 2018
This week, cancer patients, oncologists and investors alike look ahead to the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), which kicks off in Chicago on Friday. 29 May 2018
A report concludes that the prospect of leaving the European Union (EU) without an agreement that protects the UK’s pharmaceutical industry would be disastrous for just about everyone with a stake in the sector – from drugmakers to patients. 17 May 2018
The progress achieved in treating huge swathes of the world’s HIV-infected population in the last 20 to 30 years might give the impression of a therapy area where few challenges remain. 8 May 2018
Obesity is a huge problem in the developed world, and it’s getting bigger.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), people with a body mass index (BMI) above 25 are classed as overweight, and those with a BMI of 30 or above are obese. 27 April 2018
A huge reduction in opioid prescriptions is the most striking feature of the latest report from the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science on medicine usage and spending in the USA. 19 April 2018
When pharma bosses talk about innovation, they are referring both to the research and development (R&D) that goes into discovering and bringing new medicines to market that offer valuable benefits for patients, and to the money that goes into paying for that work. 11 April 2018
At first glance, the global pharmaceutical industry, often regarded as slow-moving, conservative and resistant to change, appears infertile ground for an innovation like blockchain to take hold. 3 April 2018
Continued growth in Bayer’s Pharmaceuticals unit ensured that the German life sciences group’s 2017 financial results at least had an air of respectability about them. 13 March 2018
In recent years, a small non-profit research organization in Boston, Massachusetts, has quietly acquired a significant amount of influence over pricing negotiations in the gargantuan US market for prescription pharmaceuticals. 19 February 2018
For years, China has been viewed with a mixture of excitement, optimism and suspicion by western pharmaceutical firms, with nervous investors wary of the relatively opaque political and economic environment in the country. 22 January 2018
It’s impossible to imagine how many lives antibiotics have saved since penicillin was first synthesized by Alexander Fleming in 1928 - certainly tens, if not hundreds of millions. 14 December 2017
It is the third-most common disorder in the world. In the USA, close to 38 million people suffer from it. Globally, the number is a whopping 1 billion. We are talking about migraine, also often referred to as ‘super headaches’ — a condition more prevalent than diabetes, epilepsy, and asthma combined. 11 December 2017
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, which with some justification bills itself as the leading RNAi company, isn’t shy of mentioning the Nobel-prize winning provenance of its science and technology. 17 November 2017
Thomas Busby and Oded Ben-Joseph, from investment bank Outcome Capital, look at some of the hurdles to accessing venture capital, and how companies can overcome them. 10 November 2017
Michael Ellenbogen, who was diagnosed with younger-onset Alzheimer’s disease in 2008, was invited to give a talk to staff at a major pharma company last week. He has provided his speech to The Pharma Letter as part of his drive for urgent action to defeat the disease. 31 October 2017
On November 20, the question of which country will host the European Medicines Agency post-Brexit will finally be settled, at the European Council’s General Affairs (Art. 50) meeting. 25 October 2017
A biopharmaceutical company developing novel therapies for retinal diseases, including wet age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD) and diabetic macular edema (DME).