Pfiz­er is shut­ting its Pfiz­er Ig­nite unit, ac­cord­ing to reg­u­la­to­ry dis­clo­sures, draw­ing down op­er­a­tions at a group that was meant to build re­la­tion­ships with ear­ly-stage star­tups.

The unit pro­vid­ed in­put from ex­perts and re­ceived fees for ser­vices. The fo­cus was on tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms with "the po­ten­tial to fu­el mul­ti­ple prod­ucts," ac­cord­ing to the Ig­nite web­page, and it had a par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est in on­col­o­gy, in­flam­ma­tion and im­munol­o­gy, car­diometa­bol­ic dis­ease and blood dis­or­ders.

"Pfiz­er re­mains com­mit­ted to con­tin­ued en­gage­ment with the biotech com­mu­ni­ty through busi­ness de­vel­op­ment ef­forts to ad­vance in­no­va­tion for pa­tients," a Pfiz­er spokesper­son said in re­sponse to a ques­tion from End­points News.

Ig­nite's leader, Kathy Fer­nan­do, left late last year to be­come chief busi­ness of­fi­cer of start­up Repli­cate Bio­science. Fer­nan­do de­clined to com­ment when reached by End­points.

No­vo Hold­ings, the par­ent com­pa­ny of No­vo Nordisk, saw the val­ue of the as­sets it man­ages fall by more than a third over the course of 2025, main­ly due to a mas­sive drop in the drug­mak­er's mar­ket cap.

No­vo Nordisk's Copen­hagen-list­ed share price near­ly halved be­tween the end of 2024 and the end of 2025, ham­mered by com­pet­i­tive pres­sure from com­pounders like Hims & Hers and ri­val meta­bol­ic drug de­vel­op­er Eli Lil­ly, as well as dis­ap­point­ments in the clin­ic. The com­pa­ny's US stock NVO fell about 40% in 2025.

The hold­ing com­pa­ny, which is al­so the in­vest­ment busi­ness of the No­vo Nordisk Foun­da­tion, said Thurs­day that its as­sets un­der man­age­ment to­taled DKK 694 bil­lion ($108 bil­lion) at the end of 2025 — a ma­jor drop from DKK 1,060 bil­lion ($164 bil­lion) a year ear­li­er. While its port­fo­lio yield­ed a re­turn of 9.2% at con­stant ex­change rates over the course of the year, the rate fell to 2.3% in kro­ner when con­sid­er­ing the US dol­lar's fall in val­ue against the Dan­ish cur­ren­cy.

Com­pound­ed forms of the mol­e­cule be­hind Eli Lil­ly’s meta­bol­ic block­busters Moun­jaro and Zep­bound that have vi­t­a­min B12 added to them may be un­safe, Lil­ly said Thurs­day.

Lil­ly and its fel­low GLP-1-based drug­mak­er No­vo Nordisk have both tak­en a stance against com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies, which make copy­cats of their drugs that some­times in­clude oth­er mol­e­cules such as vi­t­a­min B12 to dif­fer­en­ti­ate them from the brand­ed ver­sions. Lil­ly has sued com­pounders in the past, as has No­vo.

Lil­ly re­leased a warn­ing let­ter say­ing that tests had re­vealed “sig­nif­i­cant lev­els of an im­pu­ri­ty that re­sults from a chem­i­cal re­ac­tion be­tween tirzepatide and B12.” It sug­gest­ed that this im­pu­ri­ty could pose risks, in­clud­ing tox­i­c­i­ty and im­mune re­ac­tions, and added that pa­tients tak­ing these prod­ucts should seek al­ter­na­tive treat­ments.

A hand­ful of biotech star­tups have re­cent­ly tak­en an in­creas­ing­ly pop­u­lar route of fi­nanc­ing: ex­tend­ing ex­ist­ing rounds rather than tak­ing on a whole new fundrais­ing cam­paign.

If "mon­ey is like oxy­gen for biotechs," in the words of Alveus CEO Raj Kan­nan, fund­ing-round top-ups are a faster, eas­i­er way to catch a quick breath.

Kan­nan's Alveus is one of at least four biotechs that have bol­stered their ex­ist­ing rounds so far this year. The obe­si­ty biotech is joined by blood-fo­cused Atavis­tik Bio,