In a threshold event in the U.S., Medicare is planning to break through its obesity coverage barrier with a voluntary test of a model designed to enable Medicare Part D plans and state Medicaid programs to cover GLP-1 drugs prescribed for weight management.
Needle-phobic obesity patients got their first workaround with the U.S. FDA clearance of Novo Nordisk A/S’ once-daily GLP-1 Wegovy (semaglutide) pill, the first of its kind.
Biomarin Pharmaceutical Inc. followed up its May takeover of Inozyme Pharma Inc. with a much larger agreement to acquire Amicus Therapeutics Inc. for $14.50 per share in an all-cash transaction, tipping the equity-value scale about $4.8 billion.
Fat tissue balances energy by storing lipids during times of abundance and mobilizing them when needed, yet sustained metabolic stress demands mechanisms that limit excessive lipid loss. Researchers at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) report that stress-induced fat breakdown triggers a neutrophil response in visceral adipose tissue that feeds back to restrain lipolysis and preserve lipid reserves.
Eli Lilly and Co. took another step toward adding a way for patients to hang onto their weight loss when the firm disclosed positive top-line data from the phase III Attain-Maintain trial with orforglipron, a once-daily oral small molecule GLP-1 receptor agonist. Indianapolis-based Lilly said that at one year orforglipron met the primary and all key secondary endpoints vs. placebo, delivering superior weight maintenance as an adjunct to a healthy diet and physical activity, using the efficacy estimand and modified treatment-regimen estimand.
DBV Technologies SA’s pivotal phase III trial with the Viaskin Peanut allergy patch came through for the company, and officials plan a BLA filing with the U.S. FDA in the first half of next year. Shares of the Montrouge, France-based firm (NASDAQ:DBVT) closed Dec. 17 at $22.55, up $4.57, or 25%, on positive top-line results from the study called Vitesse with Viaskin for children, ages 4 to 7.
Gene editing can repair mutations that prematurely halt protein synthesis, resulting in incomplete peptides that cause various diseases. However, other approaches achieve the same effect without altering the genome. Startup Alltrna Inc. has developed a strategy based on transfer RNA to bypass the premature stop codons that end early protein translation. The company already has a first clinical candidate that could treat metabolic diseases such as methylmalonemia or phenylketonuria.
Two large deals and an acquisition, totaling about $4.64 billion in all, are helping wrap up what’s turning out to be a strong year. Through the first 11 months of 2025, biopharma dealmaking was robust with a collective value of $261.14 billion, the highest January through November total of the past seven years and well above 2024’s $201.35 billion. These three December deals helped revive the surge in dealmaking that had cooled in November.
Cycle Group Holdings Ltd. is buying Applied Therapeutics Inc. for a small fraction of the company’s value when it went public in 2019. Cycle is paying $0.088, nearly 9 cents, in cash per share plus a contingent value right (CVR).
The quest for metabolic disease assets continues with another player promising top dollar for novel therapeutics that deliver. Copenhagen, Denmark-based Zealand Pharma A/S entered a collaboration and license agreement with newly formed OTR Therapeutics to pursue next-generation small-molecule therapeutics, beyond the Danish firm’s current peptide pipeline candidates focused on the GLP-1, GLP-2, GIP, amylin and glucagon mechanisms.
RSS
