There are two significant messages for companies developing and profiting from obesity drugs in a meta-analysis of clinical trials examining the extent of weight regain after treatment stops. First, people taking obesity medication regain weight four times faster on average than those who lose weight through behavioral diet and exercise programs; and second, poor tolerability leads to poor adherence.
Amgen Inc. has swooped on two European cancer specialists, buying Dark Blue Therapeutics Ltd. for up to $840 million plus royalties, and sealing a $618 million license agreement with Disco Pharmaceuticals GmbH for rights to a novel cancer cell surface target.
Eye disease specialist Oculis SA is laying plans to branch out into multiple sclerosis (MS) after the phase II trials of its acute optic neuritis (AON) drug, privosegtor, showed it reduced levels of neurofilament release, a key biomarker of neuronal damage and neurodegeneration.
After welcoming the political agreement on the EU pharmaceutical legislation in December 2025, the EMA says it will be devoting 2026 to “intense preparation” for its implementation.
It’s been a year of two halves in Europe, with early optimism that the biotech sector had recovered from the post-pandemic funding drought being crushed by an investment slowdown from June onward.
After an all-night negotiating session that concluded after 5 am on Dec. 12, political agreement was finally reached on the long-awaited EU pharmaceutical legislation. The aim of the new rules is to improve patient access and increase the competitiveness of the sector, but for the industry, it was too little too late in terms of the incentives, and potentially damaging in the measures to improve access.
The long-running dispute over rebates on sales of drugs that the pharma industry must pay to the U.K. government took a turn for the worse at the start of 2025, when it transpired that the rate would be going up from 15.3% to 22.9%. The row continued for most of the rest of the year before a truce of sorts was called in December.
The EU finally reached agreement on an update of the 20-year-old pharmaceutical legislation, more than five years after the EU Commission first put forward the case for reform and following two and a half years of negotiations on the new rules.
The EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) is joining the U.S. FDA and the U.K. Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in approving Anktiva (nogapendekin alfa inbakicept-pmin) in patients with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) who have not responded to immune stimulation treatment with Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine and would otherwise require surgical removal of the bladder.
Disco Pharmaceuticals GmbH announced the final close of its seed round at €36 million (US$42 million), as it shapes up novel targets it has discovered with its surfaceome platform technology for formal preclinical development.
