LON­DON — In 2024, As­traZeneca’s CEO Pas­cal So­ri­ot set a new goal: for the com­pa­ny to pull in $80 bil­lion in an­nu­al sales by 2030. At that time, this tar­get looked am­bi­tious. But less than two years lat­er, the drug­mak­er is very bull­ish.

So­ri­ot as­sert­ed dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing in Lon­don on Tues­day that “we have a lot of rea­son to be­lieve we’re very much on track to de­liv­er our 2030 am­bi­tion, but al­so to grow past 2030.”

If As­traZeneca can main­tain its cur­rent form, he’s right. As­traZeneca’s 2025 rev­enues to­taled $58.7 bil­lion, up 9% from the year pri­or, and guid­ed to “mid-to-high sin­gle-dig­it per­cent­age” growth in the com­ing year.

As­sum­ing the com­pa­ny grows at a steady an­nu­al rate of 7%, which fits the mid-to-high-sin­gle-dig­it bill, its rev­enues in 2030 will be $85.5 bil­lion.

The mon­ey con­tin­ues to flow for pri­vate obe­si­ty and MASH drug de­vel­op­ers.

The lat­est pool of cap­i­tal is head­ed to a Shang­hai biotech called Cas­cade Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. The com­pa­ny dis­closed a near­ly 500 mil­lion yuan (about $72 mil­lion) fi­nanc­ing round via an an­nounce­ment on WeChat this week. The biotech, found­ed in De­cem­ber 2017, pre­vi­ous­ly dis­closed a 140 mil­lion yuan round in Au­gust 2023 and two "near­ly" 100 mil­lion yuan rounds in 2020 and 2022.

While many Chi­nese drug de­vel­op­ers have forged part­ner­ships with West­ern bio­phar­mas dur­ing a flur­ry of cross-bor­der deals, it ap­pears Cas­cade is de­vel­op­ing its pipeline in­de­pen­dent­ly and has glob­al rights to all of the ex­per­i­men­tal med­i­cines list­ed on its web­site. Cas­cade has con­duct­ed clin­i­cal tri­als in both Chi­na and the US.

Plus, news about In­cyte, Evom­mune, Kain­o­va and Sutro:

📊 Nek­tar out­lines one-year eczema da­ta: The com­pa­ny said its drug rezpe­galdesleukin, com­mon­ly known as rezpeg, main­tained and deep­ened pa­tients’ skin clear­ances af­ter a 52-week fol­low-up pe­ri­od in a Phase 2b study. Rezpeg had pre­vi­ous­ly suc­ceed­ed in the 16-week in­duc­tion phase last year, a read­out that dou­bled its stock price NK­TR at the time. Re­spons­es from Tues­day’s dataset came from pa­tients who had pre­vi­ous­ly reached sig­nif­i­cant skin clear­ance, as well as pa­tients who did not but achieved clear­ance af­ter a longer treat­ment pe­ri­od. Nek­tar plans to quick­ly move in­to Phase 3 eczema stud­ies, ac­cord­ing to a press re­lease, with the in­ten­tion of fil­ing for FDA ap­proval in 2029. — Max Gel­man

The in­ject­ed obe­si­ty med that's be­ing de­vel­oped by Hen­grui Phar­ma and Kail­era Ther­a­peu­tics looked high­ly promis­ing when mid-stage da­ta came out last year. The oral form of the same mol­e­cule ap­pears rather less ex­cit­ing.

The dai­ly pill, known as ribu­patide or HRS9531, al­lowed pa­tients in a Chi­na-based Phase 2 tri­al to lose up to 11.9% of their weight af­ter about six months, the part­ners said Tues­day. In­trigu­ing­ly, the best weight loss was seen with the 25 mg mid­dle dose of the pill. The 10 mg and 50 mg dos­es prompt­ed weight loss of 6.7% and 11.4% at the 26-week mark.

These num­bers came from an in­tent-to-treat analy­sis, which counts miss­ing da­ta as treat­ment fail­ures. Us­ing this analy­sis, mem­bers of the place­bo group lost 2.1% of their weight.