NEWS.

Novo Nordisk agreed on September 25 to pay Nanexa up to 1.165 billion euros for PharmaShell, an atom-thin coating that meters a drug particle's release so an injection can last a month or a quarter instead of a week. The target it names is not a new receptor but a calendar. It signals where the obesity race has moved: the molecules are settled, and the gains left are in getting people to stay on them.

Hanmi's HM17321 is an engineered urocortin-2 peptide that switches on the CRFR2 receptor instead of the incretin pathway, with a pitch of weight loss that spares muscle. Genentech bought in for up to $2.3 billion before any human efficacy data exists.

A Fudan University team priced 22 diabetes drugs across ten countries. SGLT-2 pills took 0.7 to 5.1 percent of a monthly minimum wage. GLP-1 injections took 1.6 to 110.4 percent, and unlike the pills their price barely bent to local income.

Novo Nordisk sued Eli Lilly over 'false and materially misleading' weight-loss ads, and the case turns on Lilly stacking its top tirzepatide dose against an older, lower dose of semaglutide.

Providers at LifeMD, a telehealth company Novo Nordisk lists as a legitimate GLP-1 source, were at times expected to clear 25 patient cases an hour, about two minutes each, five former employees and two lawsuits say.

Samsung Biologics, known for making antibodies, offered 1.8 billion dollars for Swiss peptide maker PolyPeptide. The bet is that injectable GLP-1 demand keeps growing even as oral pills arrive.

Researchers scored 26 peptide medicines on how suitable each would be for on-demand manufacturing during a multi-year spaceflight, published July 9 in npj Microgravity. Teriparatide, the bone-building osteoporosis shot, ranked first at 17 of 20 points, with abaloparatide and amylin tied at 16 and a 14-point cluster that included GLP-1 agonists. The traits that make a peptide easy to brew far from a pharmacy, short chain and no exotic chemistry, run almost opposite to what the blockbuster market rewards.

Eli Lilly is cutting its 2.3 billion euro Alzey injectable site in half and dropping 1,000 planned jobs to 500, blaming Germany's proposed drug-price reform. The redirected capacity is heading to the United States, and Boehringer is pulling back too.

Lilly is paying up to 800 million dollars to put an undisclosed neurodegeneration molecule on BioArctic's transferrin-receptor BrainTransporter. The recurring buyer is the delivery system, not any one drug.

Lilly's once-daily oral GLP-1 small molecule Foundayo hit roughly 17,000 US prescriptions for the week ending May 15, the first weekly print above 15,000 since the April 6 launch. Wegovy pill (oral semaglutide 25 mg) recorded roughly 142,000 in the same week. Three weeks ago the ratio was 20-to-1, and a peptidemodel piece from May 4 framed the gap as more likely to widen than narrow. It has narrowed three weeks running.

Eli Lilly's Mounjaro booked $8.66B in Q1 2026 sales, ahead of Merck's Keytruda at $7.9B, making tirzepatide the world's top-selling pharmaceutical and ending Keytruda's two-year run at #1 (a position the anti-PD-1 antibody had held since displacing Humira in early 2023). The full tirzepatide platform (Mounjaro plus Zepbound) generated $36.5B in 2025 against Keytruda's $31.6B. It is the first time a peptide therapeutic has taken the #1 drug spot since the historical era of insulin biosimilars.

Rhythm Pharmaceuticals reported Q1 2026 results May 5 that pulled in opposite directions: Imcivree (setmelanotide) net revenue of $60.1M (+59% YoY) on the acquired hypothalamic obesity launch and EU authorization, while the EMANATE Phase 3 program in genetically caused MC4R-pathway diseases missed its primary endpoint in all four independent substudies. The MC4R agonist class works in the indications it is approved for and does not generalize to heterozygous-variant populations the way the program had hoped.

Crinetics Pharmaceuticals reported Q1 2026 with Palsonify (paltusotine) at $10.3 million net product revenue, nearly double the $5.4M Q4 2025 launch quarter. 263 unique prescribers (up from 125), 232 new patient enrollment forms, and ~70% of patients reimbursed. Cash $1.3B, R&D up 17.6% to $100.1M to fund Phase 3 paltusotine in carcinoid syndrome and atumelnant in CAH and Cushing's syndrome.

Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar told CNBC May 6 that the Wegovy franchise (injectable, pill, Ozempic, Rybelsus) writes 65% of new US GLP-1 prescriptions, calling the moment a 'turnaround situation.' The Q1 disclosure also confirmed termination of the single-chamber CagriSema co-formulation; the dual-chamber injectable continues with FDA decision expected late 2026. Jefferies pushed back, arguing the lower end of guidance was not lifted enough.

Novo Nordisk Q1 2026 reported Wegovy pill sales of DKK 2.26 billion (~$354M), almost double the DKK 1.16 billion consensus, on 1.3 million Q1 prescriptions and 2 million cumulative since the January 5 launch. Total net sales DKK 96.82B (+24% YoY), operating profit DKK 59.62B (+54%), guidance tightened from -5/-13% to -4/-12%. The volume-versus-price question gets a clean answer: volume won.