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Good morning from San Francisco! It is day three of the annual JPMorgan Healthcare Convention — the largest gathering of biotech and pharma execs, buyers and analysts within the U.S.
The solar has been shining this week, and so has the sector’s optimism. A number of drugmakers, buyers and advisors recommend that 2026 is already shaping as much as be a very good — or at the least higher — yr than the final, with main drug pricing and tariff headwinds largely settled, rates of interest falling and, most significantly, encouraging science rising from firms huge and small.
On the dealmaking entrance, it has been comparatively quiet this week. No main tie-ups have been introduced, however that does not imply they are not on the way in which. In the meantime, firms are charting their yr forward, highlighting key enterprise and drug pipeline updates.
This is a recap of what I’ve heard from my conversations with a number of main CEOs.
Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar instructed me in a Monday interview that the corporate’s brand-new oral GLP-1 for weight problems, the Wegovy tablet, and its injectable counterpart below the identical title will permit it to broaden the incretin market in 2026.
However he mentioned this yr “would be the yr of value strain” following a drug pricing deal Novo Nordisk struck with President Donald Trump in November, together with the introduction of cheaper generic variations of a few of the firm’s medicine in sure worldwide markets.
“When the worth goes down, you are feeling the affect of it instantly,” Doustdar mentioned. However he added that the corporate seeks to construct quantity progress to offset these value cuts, which “is not going to be in a single day.”
Doustdar added that on high of progressing its personal pipeline, Novo Nordisk might be energetic on the enterprise improvement aspect to “see if anybody else on the market has one thing that may complement our personal pipeline.” These feedback come after Novo Nordisk misplaced a heated bidding conflict with Pfizer final yr over the weight problems biotech Metsera.
Bristol Myers Squibb CEO Chris Boerner instructed me in a Tuesday interview that the corporate has the potential to ship as much as 10 new merchandise by the tip of the last decade. These feedback come as Bristol Myers Squibb prepares to offset losses from an upcoming lack of exclusivity cycle of blockbuster medicine over the subsequent a number of years, which can permit generic rivals to come back to the market.
“We have deliberately constructed this portfolio to be fairly various and so whereas we all know not every thing goes to work, we really feel actually good concerning the substrate we have now in late-stage improvement, and the mid-stage pipeline can also be progressing properly,” he mentioned.
Boerner highlighted 11 late-stage program readouts in 2026 throughout six potential new merchandise. That features the upcoming Alzheimer’s psychosis trials — referred to as the Adept program — for Cobenfy, the corporate’s prescription remedy accredited in late 2024 for treating adults with schizophrenia.
In the case of enterprise improvement, Boerner mentioned the corporate is “casting a large internet.” He added that Bristol Myers Squibb is hoping to construct on the core therapeutic areas it is aware of properly, look throughout completely different phases of improvement and concentrate on “the most effective, most progressive science that we are able to discover” to deal with difficult-to-treat ailments.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla mentioned the corporate is “all in on weight problems” following its roughly $10 billion acquisition of the weight problems biotech Metsera final yr. Chatting with a bunch of reporters on Monday, Bourla mentioned the corporate plans to launch 10 completely different late-stage research of weight problems merchandise from Metsera by the tip of the yr, together with one research it began in November.
He additionally mentioned there have been a number of issues Pfizer did not keep in mind when negotiating that Metsera deal, together with the big out-of-pocket marketplace for weight problems medicine, the place sufferers are prepared to pay for therapies with money. Bourla likened the chance to Pfizer’s expertise with Viagra, which the corporate launched in 1998.
“Each Lilly and Novo offered their gross sales and had important gross sales outdoors the reimbursement system. Principally, outdoors the U.S., we had been calculating very restricted gross sales,” Bourla mentioned. “Now we see that this operates nearly like Viagra, the place folks had been prepared to pay and purchase it, though it was not reimbursed in any respect.”
And this is a few of the different pharma information that got here up through the convention:
- Eli Lilly and Nvidia on Monday introduced that the 2 firms would collectively make investments as much as $1 billion over 5 years to create a lab in San Francisco targeted on utilizing AI to speed up drug discovery.
- AbbVie on Monday struck a deal with the Trump administration to decrease a few of its drug costs and make investments $100 billion domestically over the subsequent decade in change for an exemption from tariffs and “future pricing mandates.” The corporate is now amongst greater than a dozen giant drugmakers that struck related agreements with Trump as a part of his “most favored nation” coverage.
- AbbVie additionally mentioned Monday it has agreed to pay $650 million up entrance to license an experimental most cancers remedy from China’s RemeGen, in a deal that would finally be value almost $5.6 billion.
Be happy to ship any suggestions, solutions, story concepts and knowledge to Annika at a brand new e-mail: annika.constantino@versantmedia.com.
