Maridebart Cafraglutide

The industry\'s top investor event of the year rolls on today in San Francisco.\n After a busy first day featuring headlines from a who\'s who of leading biopharma companies, the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference is rolling on Tuesday with many more conference-related events on the docket, including the start of Fierce JPM Week.And while Monday didn\'t produce any major deals like we\'ve seen in years past at JPM, that\'s not stopping industry leaders from crisscrossing San Francisco to keep up with their busy meeting schedules. Our reporters and editors are on the ground and will be sharing all the latest as the week goes on.Be sure to check back here regularly for JPM Day 2 updates. For a Day 1 recap, check our tracker from yesterday. And for the pharma side of the industry, check out Fierce Pharma\'s Day 1 tracker here.Tuesday, 2:50 p.m. ETNovartis is paying Zonsen PepLib Biotech $50 million cash for licensing rights to a peptide-based radioligand therapy. The exclusive worldwide rights put Novartis on the hook for development and commercialization of the asset. China biotech PepLib will also have the chance to collect an undisclosed sum in biobucks. Release Tuesday, 1:40 p.m. ETThe number of new molecules or in-market drugs with late-stage label expansion programs has grown to 37 at AstraZeneca in 2025, compared with 27 in 2021, according to a presentation by CFO Aradhana Sarin at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference on Tuesday. At the same time, the non-risk-adjusted value per indication has also increased to about $1.3 billion in 2025 from about $700 million.Some of the key phase 3 programs that Sarin highlighted include oral PCSK9 med laroprovstat, which expects pivotal data in 2027, and the first late-stage readout from the company’s first fully owned antibody-drug conjugate, CLDN18.2-targeted sonesitatug vedotin, is expected in the first half of this year. All told, the British pharma now has eight wholly owned ADCs in the clinic.Phase 3 multiple myeloma trials are also being planned this year for AZD0120, the dual CD19xBCMA CAR-T that AZ got from its acquisition of Gracell Biotechnologies. And CD19xCD3 bispecific surovatamig was recently pushed into phase 3 in follicular lymphoma and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.As to the firm’s emerging obesity portfolio, Sarin said AZ’s goal is “to address weight management and cardiometabolic risks holistically.” With phase 2 data on multiple assets expected this year, AZ plans to move to “broad phase 3 trials in 2026,” Sarin said.AZ expects its 2026 R&D costs to land toward the upper end of the low-20s percentage range of total revenue.“This level of spend will allow us to invest in emerging opportunities, while at the same time, deliver 104 phase 3 studies that we have ongoing,” Sarin said.“Throughout the next decade, our diversified portfolio and global reach provide resilience in an ever-changing external environment, and our disciplined capital allocation ensures that we can fund innovation and generate returns,” Sarin said. Tuesday, 1:30 p.m. ETAstraZeneca is acquiring partner Modella AI, a move that will allow the big pharma the ability to apply multi-modal AI foundation models and AI agents across its oncology portfolio. The buy follows a multi-year agreement inked last July in which AZ accessed Modella\'s AI to accelerate R&D. No financials were disclosed for the deal.\"AstraZeneca is transforming its drug discovery and clinical development through the deployment of innovative and impactful AI solutions,\" AZ\'s chief of AI for science innovation Jorge Reis-Filho said in the release. \"The acquisition of Modella AI provides state-of-the-art frontier pathology foundation models and AI agents that will continue to enable the development of targeted therapeutics along with diagnostics in our oncology portfolio.\" Release Tuesday, 9:30 a.m. ETNovo Nordisk is entering 2026 after a year full of changes, including a significant restructuring that saw Martin Holst Lange, M.D., Ph.D., ascend to become the company\'s chief scientific officer. At JPM, Novo personnel are taking some 200 meetings, Lange told Fierce, explaining that the company is interested in a variety of “different flavors“ of innovation. After last year\'s significant reshaping, the Danish drugmaker is doubling down on its core strengths and exploring other innovations that intersect with its metabolic focus. Story Tuesday, 9:10 a.m. ETAmgen\'s MariTide may not be among the industry\'s first wave of major obesity launches, but the California drugmaker still believes it has a contender on its hands. In fact, the pharma is confident enough in its drug to forge ahead with six global phase 3 studies of the asset, Amgen CEO Robert Bradway said during the company\'s presentation (PDF) late Monday.One area of exploration for MariTide is in weight loss maintenance. In an exploratory portion of a phase 2 study, the drug showed “strong potential“ as a maintenance therapy among patients who\'d lost at least 15% of their weight in the first portion of the study.The maintenance phase of the trial assessed MariTide for 52 additional weeks after the first part of the trial ran for the same length. In the initial part of the study, MariTide was associated with average weight loss of up to 20%, Amgen reported in November 2024, although the exact numbers appeared to dim some of the glow around the asset when considering the fierce competition in the space.Importantly, in the maintenance phase, a “large majority“ of patients maintained weight loss on a lower monthly or quarterly dose of MariTide, according to Amgen. The company touted the second year of treatment as being “very well tolerated“ on the quarterly dose but has yet to read out the full data.