The hitch for next-up glucagon-like peptide-1 inhibitor Bydureon, better known as Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s Byetta LAR, got Wall Street talking - again, more - last week about diabetes and obesity. Woebegone Mannkind Corp. stumbled, too, with its Exubera-haunted inhaled insulin Afrezza. But another bit of happier (albeit early stage) news in the space slipped out quietly, when NGM Biopharmaceuticals Inc. disclosed the first tranche of financing in a $51 million Series B round.

Medivation Inc.'s stock-jolting Phase III blow-up with Dimebon (latrepirdine) for Alzheimer's disease imperiled the firm's deal with Pfizer Inc., triggered shareholder class-action lawsuits and upped the ante for already hard-pressed developers of AD therapies across the board.

After years of plodding work, mostly by pharma firms, several are pushing products to the finish line for liver cancer, also known as hepatocellular carcinoma, but handicapping their chances is tricky. "They're all going to struggle to unseat Nexavar [in first-line therapy]" from Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc., said Marcus Hoyle, oncology analyst for Decision Resources.

One wag afflicted with irritable bowel syndrome described his symptoms as so severe that he had "infuriated bowel syndrome." For sure, the disease can be agonizing enough that the second phrase fits - and coming up with a drug for IBS has proven just as painful for developers.