Today, a brief rundown of news involving Novo Nordisk and Johnson & Johnson, as well as updates from Revolution Medicines, AstraZeneca and Formation Bio that you may have missed.
Novo Nordisk on Friday escalated its legal fight with Eli Lilly, asking a New Jersey District Court to block the Indanapolis company’s allegedly “misleading” obesity drug ads. Novo sued Lilly on Tuesday, arguing Lilly is using “deceptive” ads to claim its GLP-1 products are broadly superior to Novo’s medicines and that Lilly had ignored a cease-and-desist order. Lilly denied the allegations and said its campaign is “truthful.” Through a court motion filed Friday, Novo is now seeking a preliminary injunction that would immediately halt those ads. “Every day Lilly’s campaigns run, they divert patients to Zepbound and Mounjaro, entrench false impressions of Wegovy’s and Ozempic’s inferiority, and erode goodwill Novo Nordisk has spent decades building,” Novo’s lawyers wrote in court papers. “Money damages cannot undo that harm.” — Ben Fidler
A drug combination from Johnson & Johnson helped reduce the risk of disease progression or death by 89% compared to standard treatments in earlier-line multiple myeloma, the company said Monday. The tandem of J&J’s bispecific drugs Talvey and Tecvayli alongside pomalidomide also reduced the risk of death alone by 62% in the trial, which evaluated the regimen in patients who’d received one to four previous lines of treatment. The results were the best ever reported for bispecific treatments in relapsed-refractory multiple myeloma and help “reinforce J&J’s dominance” across all lines of therapy in the disease, wrote RBC Capital Markets analyst Trung Huynh. J&J will share the results with regulators and present them at a future medical meeting. — Ben Fidler
Revolution Medicines said Wednesday that the Food and Drug Administration has accepted the approval application for its pancreatic tumor medicine daraxonrasib. The drug has been described by medical experts in recent months as “unprecedented” and “landscape-changing” for nearly doubling survival, compared to chemotherapy, in a historically tough-to-treat cancer. U.S. regulators previously granted Revolution a “national priority” voucher to speed the approval process, giving Revolution the chance at an earlier-than-usual start to generating sales. If approved, some analysts believe it could generate at its peak as much as $10 billion annually. — Gwendolyn Wu
European regulators approved Thursday a drug combination from AstraZeneca that will be used in first-line advanced ER-positive breast cancer. The pairing of camizestrant, or Etcamah, and a CDK 4/6 inhibitor proved more effective than the standard of care, a combination of aromatase and CDK 4/6 inhibitors, in a Phase 3 study, the company said. Data show that AstraZeneca’s drug combination reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 56%. The FDA announced in May it was delaying a decision on Etcamah, which is part of a new wave of oral “selective estrogen receptor degrader” drugs. — Gwendolyn Wu
AI drug discovery firm Formation Bio tapped serial biotech entrepreneur Michael Ehlers to step in as its next chief scientific officer, the company said Wednesday. Ehlers, whose prior stops include MPM BioImpact and Apple Tree Partners, founded startups such as Ascidian Therapeutics, Replicate Bioscience, Aulos Bioscience and Intergalactic Therapeutics. In his new role, Ehlers will oversee “the creation and advancement of our growing portfolio of innovative medicines,” and guide the “scientific direction of Formation Bio’s AI platform,” he said in a LinkedIn post. The biotech last raised $372 million in 2024. — Gwendolyn Wu
