Top of the morning to you and a fine one it is. Blue skies, cool breezes, and plenty of chirping birds are enveloping the comfy Pharmalot campus, which is cause to fire up the coffee kettle for yet another cup of stimulation. Our choice today is pecan pie — sweets for the sweet, you know. Meanwhile, we have assembled the latest menu of tidbits for you to peruse. We hope you have a wonderful day, and please do keep in touch. Once again, we will note that our settings have been changed to accept postcards and telegrams. …
Novo has agreed to pay up to $2.6 billion to license an experimental, weekly weight loss pill from China’s Hengrui Pharma as it seeks to shore up its position in the oral obesity drug market, The Financial Times writes. The deal is Novo’s second since its investor day last week, when its pledges to boost growth with new drugs fell flat. The company, which is trying to regain ground lost to rival Eli Lilly in the obesity drug market, announced last week it agreed to license a technology from Nanexa that could allow patients to take one weight loss injection every few months. Analysts said a weekly pill would be a significant entrant to the market.
Roche stopped work on one of its obesity drug candidates, after clinical-trial data suggested the medicine did not hit internal targets, The Wall Street Journal tells us. The company said it returned rights to the medicine, emugrobart, to Chugai Pharmaceutical, which Roche largely owns and originally discovered the drug before licensing it to Roche. Roche had previously estimated the drug had potential to reach annual peak sales of between $1.21 billion and $2.41 billion. The company is also developing two obesity injections and a pill, and sees potential for each of them to exceed $3.6 billion in peak sales.
