Bayer’s New Strategy, Novo Vs. Lilly and Psychedelics

Bayer’s recent layoffs of 1,500 mark a step toward CEO Bill Anderson’s stated goal of removing managerial layers at the company—“fewer bosses, fewer rules,” he told  The Wall Street Journal. The move follows BMS’ announcement that it will let go more than 2,000 people.

In other news, J&J expanded its dermatology portfolio, paying $850 million in cash plus potential milestone payments for California-based Proteologix and its Phase I–ready atopic dermatitis candidate. J&J is competing with Eli Lilly, which continues to actively pursue this space as well, with positive Phase IIIb results for its candidate in March.

Roche’s Genentech is looking to jump into the hot GLP-1 space with positive results from a Phase Ib trial for its investigational weight-loss treatment CT-388. The once-weekly subcutaneous injection was part of Roche’s acquisition of Carmot Therapeutics in December for $2.7 billion—a hefty sum as Roche looks to compete with frontrunners Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. Separately, Lilly announced a late-stage win for its weekly insulin product, which outperformed Novo’s Tresiba in adults with type 2 diabetes.

We also touch on Novo’s latest positive study on Wegovy and a couple of big approvals last week, including BMS’ third indication for its CAR T therapy Breyanzi and Amgen’s Imdelltra, the first bispecific T-cell engager therapy for advanced small cell lung cancer.

Finally, we discuss this week’s special edition of ClinicaSpace, focused on psychedelics for mental health disorders. There’s a pretty extensive pipeline of therapies of psilocybin, DMT and more, for depression, substance abuse disorders and other neuropsychiatric diseases. The first psychedelic therapy for a neuropsychiatric disease—Lykos Therapeutics MDMA for PTSD—is up for FDA approval this summer. The FDA is convening an adcomm on June 4 to discuss the therapy.