No­vo Nordisk and Viking Ther­a­peu­tics took to the an­nu­al Liv­er Meet­ing to make the case for their ex­per­i­men­tal MASH drugs as they chase Madri­gal Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal­s' first-ever ap­proved treat­ment for the dis­ease.

No­vo on Tues­day de­tailed sec­ondary end­points from topline Phase 3 da­ta an­nounced ear­li­er this month. The Dan­ish drug­mak­er re­port­ed that 32.8% of pa­tients re­ceiv­ing semaglu­tide showed both res­o­lu­tion of fat buildup in the liv­er and im­prove­ment of fi­bro­sis, com­pared to 16.2% of pa­tients giv­en place­bo.

It's a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence for an end­point that is con­sid­ered a hard­er bar to hit than im­prov­ing steato­hep­ati­tis and fi­bro­sis in­de­pen­dent­ly with­out wors­en­ing the oth­er. (MASH, or meta­bol­ic dys­func­tion-as­so­ci­at­ed steato­hep­ati­tis, is al­so re­ferred to as NASH.)

Pfiz­er is en­list­ing an­oth­er Flag­ship start­up to help it cre­ate new obe­si­ty med­i­cines.

Af­ter June's Pro­Found Ther­a­peu­tics tie-up, Pfiz­er will work with the in­cu­ba­tor's Am­per­sand Bio­med­i­cines in the hunt for new bi­o­log­ics for obe­si­ty.

The New York phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny is al­so tap­ping in­to Flag­ship-found­ed Mon­tai Ther­a­peu­tics to find new small mol­e­cules for po­ten­tial­ly treat­ing lung can­cer, the com­pa­nies said Wednes­day morn­ing.

The two pacts are part of Pfiz­er's broad­er al­liance with the Cam­bridge, MA-based Flag­ship, which re­cent­ly reeled in about $3.6 bil­lion in new funds as phar­ma part­ner­ships be­come a "big­ger and big­ger deal."

Pfiz­er has had an un­even few years in obe­si­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly with its danuglipron pro­gram. Last month, it re­vealed more de­tails about its oth­er ear­ly-stage bets: a GIP an­tag­o­nist and a once-dai­ly oral GLP-1.

23andMe has notched a re­search part­ner­ship with Mi­rador Ther­a­peu­tics to pro­vide the biotech com­pa­ny with ac­cess to its trove of ge­net­ic da­ta.

Mi­rador, which launched with more than $400 mil­lion in March to fo­cus on im­mune and in­flam­ma­to­ry dis­eases, will use the de-iden­ti­fied ge­net­ic and phe­no­typ­ic da­ta for tar­get val­i­da­tion and pre­ci­sion med­i­cine, the com­pa­nies said Wednes­day. The com­pa­nies didn’t dis­close the terms of the deal.

The new col­lab­o­ra­tion comes as 23andMe winds down its own in­ter­nal drug de­vel­op­ment ef­forts to fo­cus on its con­sumer DNA test­ing kits and re­search part­ner­ships. Ear­li­er this month, the strug­gling com­pa­ny shut­tered its ther­a­peu­tics di­vi­sion and cut 40% of its work­force.

In 2018, 23andMe inked a $300 mil­lion five-year deal to give GSK ex­clu­sive ac­cess to its ge­net­ic data­base. The British phar­ma com­pa­ny then paid $20 mil­lion in 2023 to ex­tend the part­ner­ship for an­oth­er year of non-ex­clu­sive ac­cess.

Sage’s fi­nal hope to turn its busi­ness around has failed, leav­ing the fu­ture of the once high-fly­ing com­pa­ny and its post­par­tum de­pres­sion drug un­cer­tain.

The com­pa­ny an­nounced Wednes­day morn­ing that a Phase 2 study for dalzanem­dor, pre­vi­ous­ly known as SAGE-718, failed in Hunt­ing­ton’s dis­ease, say­ing it missed the pri­ma­ry and all sec­ondary end­points. As a re­sult, Sage will stop all fur­ther dalzanem­dor de­vel­op­ment and sus­pend an on­go­ing open-la­bel safe­ty study in Hunt­ing­ton’s.