China’s National Medical Products Administration has accepted for review Jiuyuan Genetic Biopharmaceutical Co. Ltd.’s drug application for Jikeqin, a biosimilar product to Novo Nordisk A/S’s Wegovy (semaglutide) for obesity.
Coming off a U.S. FDA approval of the first GLP-1 in pill format, Novo Nordisk A/S leaned further into oral drug delivery efforts, partnering with Vivtex Corp. to develop next-generation oral formulations of peptide and protein therapeutics in a potential $2.1 billion deal that marks the highest-profile news for Vivtex since the firm spun out of MIT in 2018.
Shares in Novo Nordisk A/S took another battering after the company announced its next-generation obesity drug Cagrisema failed to show noninferiority to Eli Lilly and Co. Inc.’s Zepbound in an open-label comparator study.
The pressure to replace animal testing with human-relevant assays that are more predictive of human-drug responses has now reached a tipping point, and there is a movement toward greater acceptance of these potentially more translatable tests.
Microbiome specialist Microbiotica Ltd. announced positive data from a phase Ib study of MB-310, an orally administered live biotherapeutic product for treating ulcerative colitis, with 12 of 19 treated patients achieving clinical remission, compared to three of 10 patients in the placebo arm.
Iambic Therapeutics Inc.’s multiyear technology and discovery pact with Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. could help the San Diego-based firm advance its own pipeline in a big way.
Another two biopharma companies priced IPOs on Nasdaq to raise a combined $350 million, becoming the fourth and fifth firms to debut on U.S. markets in 2026.
Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH signed a €1.058 billion (US$1.26 billion) deal with Simcere Pharmaceutical Group Ltd. to license select rights to SIM-0709, a preclinical TL1A/IL-23p19-directed bispecific antibody targeting inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Once it was considered to be more or less a passive energy-storing device that could double as a cushion. But increasingly, fat is conceptualized as an endocrine organ as much as a tissue type. Now, separate research groups have reported new insights into the functional roles of different fats based on their anatomical location and functional characteristics.
Microbiome specialist Enterobiotix Ltd. is in the throes of raising a new round of funding for a phase IIb trial after reporting positive results from the phase IIa study of EBX-102-02, an oral therapy for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).