Welcome to another edition of Endpoints Weekly — and happy spring! The weather may not feel very spring-like here in NYC (outside that false start a couple weeks ago), but we’re grateful the sidewalk snowbanks are gone, at the very least. Let’s dive into the headlines.
This week we had AI news from Roche and Nvidia, who want to build the industry’s leading “AI factory” — though details on cost and timeline remain scarce. We also reported on how the biopharma industry is looking to cushion the effect of “most favored nation” drug pricing policy, oral GLP-1 data from Structure Therapeutics, Verily’s latest fundraise, and a federal court decision on RFK Jr.’s vaccine policies. Have a great weekend! —
Max Gelman
The AI race in biopharma is heating up.
Roche and Nvidia
partnered
on what they’re calling the “largest announced hybrid-cloud AI factory” in the industry. The announcement comes just a few months after Eli Lilly unveiled plans for its own AI-powered supercomputer, which Lilly claimed would be biopharma’s most powerful.
Roche’s Genentech originally signed a deal with Nvidia in 2023.
The newly expanded agreement covers the broader Roche enterprise, spanning its drugs and diagnostics businesses and areas like discovery, manufacturing and sales. The computing power will be used to train and run AI models across those functions.
Financial details were not disclosed
. In an interview with Endpoints’ Andrew Dunn, Genentech’s head of research and early development Aviv Regev also declined to offer a timeline beyond “quick” for building out the capacity. On the hardware side, Roche is adding 2,716 of Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs, bringing its total to over 3,500 Blackwell chips — compared with the 1,016 chips in Lilly’s supercomputer.
🌎 Drugmakers are looking for ways to mitigate the potential effect
of the Trump administration’s “most favored nation” US drug pricing policy on future launches, Anna Brown
reported this week
. Lawyers say they’re receiving inquiries about whether amending licensing contracts could be a way to do so.
MFN is at the forefront of companies’ minds when looking to enter a new licensing deal,
according to Adam Golden, an M&A and IP transactions lawyer at Freshfields. A typical licensing agreement might involve a drug developer licensing an asset to a large commercial partner in territories where the developer can’t execute the launch itself. Now, lawyers are getting questions about whether biotechs can ask their overseas partners to delay launches to avoid having a reference price that could lower the price in the US.
Established licensing deals are also being reviewed
, but they may be difficult to change, especially if pharma companies want to reduce royalties, Golden told Endpoints.
So far, 16 large pharma companies have agreed to MFN deals with the White House.
An Eli Lilly spokesperson told Endpoints that MFN has no impact on the drugmaker’s licensing deals. A Roche spokesperson said that business is continuing as normal, despite geopolitical factors and a rapidly changing operating environment. Anna has the full story
here.
Structure Therapeutics may have a serious GLP-1 contender on its hands.
The biotech’s once-daily pill, aleniglipron, produced a placebo-adjusted average weight loss of 16.3%, or about 39 pounds, at the 180 mg dose after 44 weeks. Results came
from a Phase 2 study
in patients with obesity or overweight with at least one weight-related comorbidity. Patients on the higher 240 mg dose saw a placebo-adjusted weight loss of 16%.
It’s a major milestone for Structure,
which has been one of the most-watched small biotechs in the obesity space. The company intends to move into Phase 3 in the second half of 2026 as it aims to compete with Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly — and it intends to do so without a partner, at least for now. That said, a big pharma alliance could be key to unlocking aleniglipron’s full potential; CEO Raymond Stevens called such a partnership “really, really important” at an investor conference last year.
💰 Verily has raised $300 million in outside funding
that ends parent company Alphabet’s controlling position in the healthcare innovation company, Endpoints’ Shelby Livingston
learned exclusively
this week. Alphabet remains a significant minority investor. But Verily CEO Stephen Gillett said the move marks the company’s “next phase of growth.”
Verily has been making moves to step out of Alphabet’s shadow,
with plans to eventually go public. It’s been divesting business units, including its insurance business Granular, and sharpening its focus. Most recently, it’s zeroed in on an AI healthcare platform, called Pre, that powers all Verily solutions.
The new funds will accelerate Verily’s healthcare platform strategy
to bring data together into personal health records, speed up clinical research and deliver personalized care. Shelby has
more details here
.
💉
A federal judge
issued a stay
on the agency’s January decision to downgrade recommendations for six vaccines
on the childhood vaccine schedule. He also suspended the appointments of 13 members on the CDC’s reconstituted vaccine advisory panel, and stayed the votes taken by those members.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and several other health organizations filed the lawsuit in July
over changes to Covid-19 vaccine recommendations for kids and pregnant women, and have since amended the complaint multiple times to challenge additional actions, including the January changes to the childhood vaccine schedule and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s reconstitution of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
Plaintiffs said in an amended complaint
that the agency failed to consider whether changes to the childhood vaccine schedule “would lead to increases in serious illness and death due to vaccine-preventable illnesses.” But attorneys for HHS argued in court documents that the changes to the childhood vaccine schedule were “reasonable and reasonably explained.” Read more about the case
here.
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