Like the basketball Atlantic Coast Conference, the other ACC, the American College of Cardiology, ramps up this time of year with its annual scientific session.

In drug development, it can be difficult to follow the crowd. And that goes double for a market like obesity that's struggled to gain traction.

SAN DIEGO – The capital flowing in the public markets makes it easier for biotechs to gain funding through IPOs and secondary offerings. Companies raised $6.5 billion through IPOs last year and more established public companies were able to add nearly $16.7 billion to their coffers according to BioWorld Snapshots.

The hepatitis C market seems to do things in pairs.

As part of his proposed budget, President Barack Obama recommended spending $215 million on a Precision Medicine Initiative. (See BioWorld Today, Feb. 2, 2015.)

The approval of Takeda Pharmaceuticals U.S.A.'s and Orexigen Therapeutics Inc.'s Contrave (naltrexone and bupropion) in September and Saxenda (liraglutide) from Novo Nordisk A/S last month doubled the number of obesity drugs approved by the FDA in the last two and a half years.

Both Merck & Co. Inc.’s Keytruda (pembrolizumab) and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s Opdivo (nivolumab) were approved by the FDA to treat advanced metastatic melanoma last year, but that’s only the start of the possibilities for the PD-1 pathway drugs. (See BioWorld Today, Sept. 5, 2014.)

Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, joyous Kwanzaa. Whatever you celebrated, the venture capitalists gave the biopharma industry a mighty large gift in 2014. Investments in private drug companies tracked by BioWorld Snapshots rounded out the year at $3.85 billion, up substantially from the $2.6 billion in 2013 in the U.S.

Human growth hormone (hGH) is a $3.5 billion industry, but it's plagued by a major issue: All of the current versions of hGH (somatropin) – Novo Nordisk's Norditropin, Eli Lilly and Co.'s Humatrope, Roche AG unit Genentech Inc.'s Nutropin-AQ, Merck Serono's Saizen, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.'s Tev-tropin, LG Life Science Ltd.'s Valtropin and Omnitrope, sold by Novartis AG's generic group Sandoz – have to be injected daily.

IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics is out with its latest prediction for sales of medicines through 2018, when global spending is expected to reach between $1.28 trillion and $1.31 trillion, an increase of $290 million to $320 million over 2013 levels.