No­vo Nordisk has once again upped its bid for Met­sera, ac­cord­ing to sources fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter, in an ef­fort to beat out a raised Pfiz­er of­fer that was de­liv­ered late Wednes­day.

The ex­act de­tails of the new of­fers weren't im­me­di­ate­ly clear. The peo­ple who de­scribed them spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

Met­sera shares MT­SR were up about 13% on Thurs­day as in­vestors bet the bid­ding war would dri­ve up the fi­nal price. The com­pa­nies ei­ther did­n't im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to ques­tions or did­n't have a com­ment.

Pfiz­er and No­vo have been trad­ing blows in court, in Wash­ing­ton and around the bid­ding ta­ble, as they seek to win what both are treat­ing as a cru­cial prize in the mar­ket for an­ti-obe­si­ty and weight loss treat­ments. On Mon­day, Pfiz­er raised its bid to as much as $8.1 bil­lion. Then, on Tues­day, No­vo hiked its pro­pos­al to as much as $10 bil­lion — a to­tal that Pfiz­er then matched.

Ve­ra Ther­a­peu­tics built its case for a rare kid­ney dis­ease drug Thurs­day morn­ing, re­veal­ing a fuller Phase 3 dataset af­ter toplin­ing the re­sults ear­li­er this year.

If the com­pa­ny can con­vince the FDA — Ve­ra plans to file for ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval be­fore 2025 ends — it will se­cure its first prod­uct ap­proval and tran­si­tion to a com­mer­cial biotech. But Ve­ra is al­so ex­pect­ed to face a crowd­ed mar­ket should its drug, called at­aci­cept, get ap­proved. Ex­ec­u­tives hope Thurs­day’s da­ta can help set its can­di­date apart.

One po­ten­tial com­peti­tor is Ot­suka's ex­per­i­men­tal drug, which has an FDA de­ci­sion date of Nov. 28, in the same set­ting of IgA nephropa­thy (IgAN). A read­out from Ot­su­ka’s drug in June caused Ve­ra’s stock VE­RA to fall 30% at the time, as in­vestors com­pared the two pro­grams.

John­son & John­son’s Caply­ta has won FDA ap­proval as a new ad­junc­tive treat­ment for pa­tients with ma­jor de­pres­sive dis­or­der, bol­ster­ing the ac­qui­si­tion that gave the large phar­ma con­trol of the drug.

The new ap­proval is Caply­ta’s first for­ay in­to the de­pres­sion mar­ket af­ter its orig­i­nal ap­proval as an an­tipsy­chot­ic for schiz­o­phre­nia, and for de­pres­sive symp­toms as­so­ci­at­ed with bipo­lar I and II. The de­ci­sion was based on two Phase 3 stud­ies that found that a once-dai­ly oral dose of Caply­ta, when tacked on­to an an­ti­de­pres­sant, spurred a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in de­pres­sion symp­toms.

Caply­ta was the foun­da­tion of J&J’s $14.6 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion of In­tra-Cel­lu­lar Ther­a­pies ear­li­er this year, which fol­lowed Phase 3 read­outs in ma­jor de­pres­sive dis­or­der in 2024. J&J is look­ing to win a slice of the de­pres­sion mar­ket, specif­i­cal­ly the more than half of pa­tients whose first-line treat­ments don't help enough be­cause of weak ef­fi­ca­cy or side ef­fects.

Plus, news about Cul­li­nan, 4DMT, Ax­some, As­traZeneca, Noe­ma, Uro­Gen Phar­ma, Halozyme and Ben­itec:

↩️ Dyne de­lays my­oton­ic dy­s­tro­phy plans again: Dyne said it now ex­pects to sub­mit an ap­pli­ca­tion for FDA ap­proval of its my­oton­ic dy­s­tro­phy type 1 drug, called DYNE-101, in the third quar­ter of 2027. Ear­li­er this year, the com­pa­ny changed the pri­ma­ry end­point of its study, de­lay­ing its fil­ing to late 2026. — Lei Lei Wu

🤝 Dy­navax and Vaxart make a deal: Dy­navax said it has an ex­clu­sive li­cense to Vaxart’s oral Covid-19 vac­cine that is cur­rent­ly in a Phase 2b tri­al. Vaxart will re­ceive a $25 mil­lion up­front fee; Dy­navax will al­so have a $5 mil­lion eq­ui­ty in­vest­ment in Vaxart. There’s al­so an ad­di­tion­al $50 mil­lion for Vaxart af­ter the