Endpoints News
Top drugmakers spent slightly less on Washington lobbying in 2025's final quarter Read in browser
Endpoints News
Thank you for reading, dupa dupackia!
basic
UPGRADE
M T W Thu F
22 January, 2026
ENDPOINTS at #JPM26 - NOW AVAILABLE ON-DEMAND
Catch up on all the sessions from Endpoints at #JPM26, including conversations with Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar and Nobel laureate Fred Ramsdell on where biopharma is heading next. Visit our on-demand hub to watch now.
top stories
1. High court picked Hikma’s ‘skinny label’ fight after letting the issue ‘percolate’ 
2. Top drugmakers spent slightly less on Washington lobbying in 2025's final quarter
3. Hua Medicine plots diabetes drug expansion in China and beyond
4. Bristol Myers signs deal with Janux on T cell engager for $50M upfront
5. Corcept's drug extends patients' lives in key ovarian cancer study
6. China-rooted Corxel raises up to $287M for GLP-1 pill with global ambitions
7. Amicus reveals it had another suitor before reaching $4.8B sale to BioMarin
more stories
 
Alexis Kramer
.

The Supreme Court is finally taking up a “skinny label” case after rejecting a similar dispute from Teva three years ago. Nicole DeFeudis dives into how the two cases differ and why the justices decided that Hikma’s case was the appropriate vehicle to address the issue.

.
Alexis Kramer
Editor, Endpoints News
1
by Nicole DeFeudis

Gener­ic and brand-name drug­mak­ers have been di­vid­ed for decades over the use of “skin­ny la­bels” to bring low­er-cost drugs to mar­ket.

Now, the Supreme Court is tak­ing up the is­sue.

It’s wad­ing in­to a case that could have broad­er im­pli­ca­tions on how drug­mak­ers launch gener­ics and nav­i­gate le­gal risks. The high court turned down a sim­i­lar skin­ny la­bel dis­pute three years ago, and le­gal ex­perts say it was just a mat­ter of time be­fore it ad­dressed the is­sue.

“Some­times it's a mat­ter of just hav­ing an is­sue per­co­late a few times up to them,” said Chad Land­mon, an in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty lawyer with Polsinel­li. “They're see­ing it for an­oth­er time, and see­ing that it's a con­tin­ued is­sue.”

Click here to continue reading
2
by Zachary Brennan

The top five bio­phar­ma com­pa­ny spenders on con­gres­sion­al lob­by­ing spent slight­ly less in Wash­ing­ton in the fi­nal quar­ter of 2025 than they did in the pre­vi­ous quar­ter, the lat­est Sen­ate dis­clo­sures show.

Pfiz­er and John­son & John­son both spent $1 mil­lion less on lob­by­ing in Q4 than Q3 2025, al­though all five com­pa­nies' Q4 num­bers were gen­er­al­ly aligned with what they shelled out in the year ear­li­er, ac­cord­ing to the Sen­ate data­base.

As far as spe­cif­ic is­sues draw­ing at­ten­tion, No­var­tis point­ed to NIH fund­ing, which saw a slight boost in the most re­cent gov­ern­ment fund­ing bill be­fore Con­gress, "most fa­vored na­tion" pric­ing and PBM re­forms, which were added to the fund­ing bill too.

Am­gen and Pfiz­er sim­i­lar­ly called out PBM re­forms as among their top lob­by­ing is­sues. Pfiz­er al­so point­ed to vac­cine pol­i­cy and CDC changes as top pri­or­i­ties.

Click here to continue reading
3
by Jared Whitlock

Shang­hai-based Hua Med­i­cine wants to cap­ture a greater share of the glob­al di­a­betes mar­ket with a dif­fer­ent ap­proach from pop­u­lar GLP-1 med­i­cines.

Many new­er di­a­betes drugs mim­ic gut hor­mones to reg­u­late glu­cose. Hua's drug for type 2 di­a­betes, ap­proved in Chi­na un­der the name Dorza­gli­atin, does not mim­ic hor­mones but in­stead mod­u­lates the body’s bio­chem­i­cal ma­chin­ery. It en­hances the ac­tiv­i­ty of glu­cok­i­nase, an en­zyme that has a broad role in con­trol­ling blood sug­ar.

Hua is plan­ning to ex­pand Dorza­gli­atin be­yond main­land Chi­na and in­to Hong Kong, Macau and South­east Asia. It's al­so test­ing a next-gen­er­a­tion ver­sion that's de­signed to pro­vide more sta­ble glu­cose con­trol, tar­get­ing glob­al ex­pan­sion.

"Hua’s strat­e­gy is to demon­strate the broad ben­e­fits of ad­dress­ing the root cause of type 2 di­a­betes," chief strat­e­gy of­fi­cer George Lin told End­points News dur­ing the JP Mor­gan Health­care Con­fer­ence.

Click here to continue reading
David Campbell, Janux Therapeutics CEO
4
by Max Gelman

Janux Ther­a­peu­tics has found a new part­ner.

The San Diego-based biotech is team­ing up with Bris­tol My­ers Squibb on a sol­id tu­mor pro­gram, but the tar­get is not yet dis­closed. Bris­tol My­ers will pay $50 mil­lion in up­front and near-term cash, and could be on the hook for about $800 mil­lion more in mile­stones.

The pro­gram in­volved in the deal is still pre­clin­i­cal. Janux will han­dle all de­vel­op­ment up to the IND stage, af­ter which Bris­tol My­ers will take the lead. Janux, how­ev­er, will al­so re­main “ac­tive­ly in­volved” through Phase 1 stud­ies, ac­cord­ing to a Thurs­day re­lease.

The deal comes a few weeks af­ter a dis­ap­point­ing tri­al read­out from Janux. In De­cem­ber, the biotech re­port­ed that its lead pro­gram, JANX007, saw its re­sponse rate drop as more pa­tients re­ceived the drug. JANX007 is be­ing test­ed for an ad­vanced form of prostate can­cer.

Click here to continue reading
5
by Lei Lei Wu

Cor­cept Ther­a­peu­tics said its ex­per­i­men­tal drug cut the risk of death by 35% for pa­tients with a chal­leng­ing form of ovar­i­an can­cer when added on top of chemother­a­py, notch­ing an im­por­tant win af­ter the Cal­i­for­nia biotech faced an FDA re­jec­tion of its drug in a dif­fer­ent dis­ease.

In re­sults an­nounced Thurs­day morn­ing, Cor­cept re­port­ed that plat­inum-re­sis­tant ovar­i­an can­cer pa­tients who re­ceived its drug rela­co­ri­lant on top of chemother­a­py lived for a me­di­an of 16 months. That’s com­pared to 11.9 months for pa­tients who re­ceived chemother­a­py alone as part of the Phase 3 ROSEL­LA study. The dif­fer­ence was sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant, trans­lat­ing to a p-val­ue of 0.0004 and meet­ing its sec­ond pri­ma­ry end­point in the tri­al.

Click here to continue reading
6
by Andrew Dunn

Since its 2019 found­ing, Corx­el Phar­