News

Novartis continued to navigate the patent cliff in the first quarter of 2026 as sales of leading drugs such as Entresto for heart failure faced stiff competition from generics. Net sales for the company as a whole fell by 5% at constant exchange rates and by 1% at actual rates, while operating income contracted by an even larger amount as the company increased spending on research and development. The allocation for R&D in the quarter was $2.7 billion compared with $2.4 billion a year earlier.

With Luke Miels in place as chief executive, GSK Plc is taking steps to simplify operations and identify new opportunities in its late-stage pipeline. A portfolio review is underway to identify 50 promising assets that could be the focus of drug development in the coming years. Mr Miels became CEO on 1 January, succeeding Emma Walmsley. He had previously been the company’s chief commercial officer having joined GSK in 2017.

UCB SA announced on 3 May that it has signed an agreement to acquire Candid Therapeutics Inc of San Diego, US, broadening its portfolio to include biologics targeting autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. The Belgium-based biopharma company already has marketed products for epilepsy, plaque psoriasis, and Crohn’s disease. The acquisition will add preclinical and early clinical-stage products to UCB’s portfolio, the most advanced of which are bispecific T cell engagers. These are antibodies that can bind T cells to tumour cells to kill cancers.

AstraZeneca Plc expects revenue this year to grow by a mid-to-high single-digit percentage as label expansions for existing drugs and new molecular entities progress towards market entry.  At a briefing for journalists on 29 April, Pascal Soriot, the chief executive, confirmed the company’s ambition to achieve revenue of $80 billion by 2030. He said the company is advancing through a “catalyst-rich period” with multiple positive Phase 3 readouts and regulatory submissions underway. 

Seaport Therapeutics Inc, a spin-out of Boston, US-based PureTech Health Plc, priced an initial public offering of its shares on 1 May yielding $254.9 million. The IPO comes only two years after the company’s launch and follows positive early clinical data for its lead product SPT-300 which is an oral prodrug of a neurosteroid that plays a key role in mood regulation. The drug has progressed to Phase 2b and is being investigated as a treatment for major depressive disorder.

Sanofi SA is guiding for a high single-digit percentage rise in sales this year. Significantly, it also expects adjusted operating income to slightly surpass the sales increase indicating that the company is seeing a rise in profitability. The French company issued its first quarter earnings statement on 23 April – just a week before Belén Garijo takes over as chief executive. Dr Garijo succeeds Paul Hudson. She was most recently CEO at Merck KGaA and earlier in her career was an executive at Sanofi, leading pharmaceutical operations in Europe and Canada.

The Roche Group confirmed its forecast for a mid-single digit increase in sales this year following a first quarter during which sales increased by 6% at constant exchange rates, but declined by 5% in Swiss francs following a period during with the franc rose significantly in value against the dollar and other currencies. The company expects core earnings per share, expressed at constant exchange rates, to rise by a high single digit rate. This will make way for a rise in the annual dividend. As is customary, Roche did not report earnings for the quarter.

Jeito Capital closed its second private equity fund, Jeito II, on 8 April with a call to the pharmaceutical industry to meet the challenge of the patent cliff by producing more innovative new medicines for patients. Significant new financing will be available for  companies that do this following the close of Jeito II which raised €1 billion, above expectations and about double the size of Jeito I which attracted €534 million in 2021. The new fund is expected to supply capital to 15 to 20 companies with larger amounts than in the past.

France-based Kurma Partners SA announced the final closing of a new fund on 23 April to support start-up companies, largely in Europe, which show promise of developing medicines for serious or incurable diseases. The final close of Biofund IV, at €215 million, is about a third higher than the size of Biofund III, its predecessor, and was supported by several large institutions. They include the Australian pharmaceutical company CSL Ltd, the European Investment Fund, and Bpifrance, the French national investment bank.

A small molecule inhibitor of the mutated RAS protein, a high priority cancer target, has successfully delivered a significant overall survival benefit for patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer. The results were obtained in a Phase 3 trial of the RAS inhibitor daraxonrasib and reported on 13 April. The developer is Revolution Medicines Inc, a clinical-stage US biopharmaceutical company with a portfolio of RAS-addicted cancers. These are cancers that are dependent on mutant RAS activity for their survival.