The conference calendar and the deal sheet have both been full these past few weeks, and even by pharma's standards that's a lot to take in. Today we look past the announcements to what they actually tell us.
In oncology, three majors gave three different answers to the same question. In metabolic disease, everyone is circling Lilly and Novo, though the race may already be settled.
How To Win In Oncology When Everyone Is Already There
Radiopharmaceuticals is not an easy win for any firm hoping to make it big in the oncology space. Novartis, however, has bet big on the technology with a consistent stream of deals over the last decade to make the space its own. However, start ups are taking off and the Swiss major might be starting to look over its shoulder.
Novartis presented data at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) conference for Pluvicto and its next-generation actinium-225 PSMA-617 in prostate cancer, but the story was not the data. It was that Telix and Convergent showed up at the same conference with their own next-generation radiopharmaceutical candidates. Slowly but surely, the market is filling up with challengers, and it would be a good time to take stock of competition before throwing your hat into the ring on this one.
Speaking of deals, we have seen quite a few this year (looking at you, Eli Lilly), but the most recent one came as a slight surprise. GSK’s new CEO Luke Miels is wasting no time dipping into the market. GSK’s third deal of the year also marked its second biggest one to date. Yes, we are talking about the Nuvalent acquisition. Nuvalent’s key late-stage assets, zidesamtinib and neladalkib are both potential best-in-class, next-generation, highly selective mutation-targeting lung cancer therapies. Both also have potential blockbuster labels already attached. Miels said on a media call that the buyout continued GSK’s “brick-by-brick” approach to building its oncology portfolio. With limited contributions from its oncology drugs to its overall revenue heft, a few more bricks could still be baked or bought in over the coming months.