Survodutide

→ A decorated GLP-1 pioneer is retiring at Novo Nordisk . Channeling Elvis Presley with a microphone emoji for good measure, Lotte Bjerre Knudsen said on LinkedIn that she “has left the building” after 36 years with Novo. Knudsen won the Breakthrough Prize last year with Jens Juul Holst of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, along with three other scientists, for discovering the peptide that has rocked the industry. She created liraglutide , which is sold as Saxenda for weight loss and Victoza for type 2 diabetes. And while Eli Lilly means business as Novo’s fiercest competitor in the obesity space — adding another approval last week with its GLP-1 pill Foundayo — Ozempic and Wegovy have become household names as Knudsen’s long career draws to a close. “To have played such a pivotal role in advancing science that has meant so much to so many people —that is a privilege beyond measure,” Knudsen wrote. → As it readies itself to release crucial Phase 3 data on its weight loss candidate, Boehringer Ingelheim has lured an obesity specialist away from Novo Nordisk. According to a LinkedIn post , Sylvia Shubert has joined the German drugmaker as SVP of obesity and liver health. She will have much to do in her new role: The American Diabetes Association’s annual meeting in June will see the presentation of data from two late-stage trials of survodutide , the GLP-1 and glucagon agonist that grew out of a 2011 metabolic drug development collaboration between Boehringer and Zealand Pharma . If the data are positive, the company will want to gear up for the shot’s launch in the increasingly competitive obesity space. Before moving to Boehringer, Shubert spent nearly two years at Novo as VP and US therapeutic area head for obesity. She helped oversee the sale of Wegovy, including its launch in new uses — for reducing the risk of cardiovascular events and treating the fatty liver disease MASH. Her experience might come in handy at Boehringer, since survodutide is also in late-stage MASH trials. Earlier, Shubert spent three and a half years at J&J and nearly 14 years at Novartis . → Roche ’s radiotherapy partner Orano Med has tapped Frederic Desdouits as CEO. The Pierre Fabre alum was on the board of directors at TreeFrog Therapeutics before he became CEO of the French stem cell biotech in 2021. Mark Rothera , the former CEO of Orchard Therapeutics , Silence Therapeutics and Viracta Therapeutics , replaced Desdouits at TreeFrog in December. Orano Med also partnered with Sanofi for their radiopharmaceutical AlphaMedix in gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (GEP-NETs). Despite encouraging data , Sanofi disclosed in its Q4 update that it deprioritized the asset, opening the door for Perspective Therapeutics to potentially compete with Novartis’ Lutathera . → Dutch ADC developer Byondis has promoted Christoph Korpus to replace Jacques Lemmens as CEO. Lemmens will still chair the board of the company he founded. The new chief executive wrapped up an eight-year tenure with Merck KGaA in December 2024 and became CBO at Byondis in January 2025. Korpus was elevated to director, global business development and licensing oncology at Merck KGaA, a job title he kept for his last three years at the German pharma. → BioCryst has plucked Sandeep Menon from Alnylam and he will lead R&D at the Orladeyo maker, which snapped up another hereditary angioedema candidate when it bought Astria Therapeutics last fall. Menon was chief development officer, head of clinical development and safety for Alnylam, playing a pivotal role in the approval of its heart drug Amvuttra . He held multiple positions over a 13-year career with Pfizer , including CSO, BioMedicine AI and digital sciences. Jon Stonehouse retired from BioCryst on Dec. 31 and handed the reins to commercial chief Charlie Gayer . → Days after Endpoints News exclusively revealed Phase 1b data for Enveda ’s eczema candidate ENV-294 , CEO Viswa Colluru wrote on LinkedIn that Inhwan Kim has been promoted to chief strategy officer. Kim spent the last 18 months as SVP, portfolio strategy & operations. “Three years ago, I came across Enveda in a random late-night LinkedIn post and found its core thesis — to discover novel medicines from life’s chemistry, refined for biological relevance over billions of years of natural R&D — so compelling that I applied on the spot, hoping to be part of the story,” Kim wrote in a separate LinkedIn post . Three years later, Colluru said the new position “formalizes what’s already been true: Inhwan is one of the people who decides what Enveda becomes.” → Peter Anastasiou has been called up from the board of directors to take the COO job at Harmony Biosciences , while Rapport Therapeutics CFO Troy Ignelzi and ex- Sage chairman Geno Germano each nab a spot on the board. Anastasiou has been a board member at Harmony since 2023 and ran Capsida Biotherapeutics from 2022-25 following a 12-year run at Lundbeck . In September, Capsida said a patient died in a trial that was evaluating its gene therapy for a rare brain disorder, and Anastasiou’s LinkedIn page indicates that he left the company a month later. The biotech later revealed in an open letter that the patient died from cerebral edema. Former Acelyrin chief Mina Kim is still listed as interim CEO on Capsida’s website. Harmony also said that Valor Equity Partners ’ Antonio Gracias will step down from the board. → Overcoming a CRL to finally win the first-ever FDA approval for a Barth syndrome treatment, Stealth BioTherapeutics has promoted David Brown to CSO. Few people know the company as well as Brown, who advised Stealth for seven years before joining the team as senior director, scientific and technical innovation in 2019. He moves up to the CSO slot after two years as SVP of discovery. “I am energized by the work we do at Stealth every day to translate deep knowledge of mitochondrial bioenergetics into new medicines for people facing debilitating diseases,” Brown said in a press release . → Norwegian I/O player Lytix Biopharma has selected Novo Nordisk alum Renée Christine Amundsen as COO. Amundsen left Novo last year and was corporate VP for the diabetes commercial unit. Lytix is studying an oncolytic molecule called ruxotemitide as a monotherapy and in combination with Merck ’s Keytruda . → Tenpoint Therapeutics reached the regulatory checkered flag in January with an FDA approval for its presbyopia eye drop Yuvezzi . This week, Tenpoint has welcomed Stephen Lane as CMO. Lane held this position at eye care specialist Alcon , where he was also head of medical safety. When the approval came through, Tenpoint said it hauled in a combined $235 million from an $85 million Series B and a $150 million debt facility. → Joti Marango has landed at Gaithersburg, MD-based Remedy Plan Therapeutics as chief financial and business officer. The former Aptose exec had juggled the roles of COO and CFO at Ikena Oncology , which reverse merged with Inmagene and rebranded to ImageneBio under the ticker $IMA . “With our first oncology study now underway, our differentiated approach to NAMPT inhibition positions us well to tackle increasingly broader segments of the oncology market,” Marango said in a statement . → TuHURA Biosciences , which did a reverse merger of its own with Kintara , has brought in Amanda Garofalo as SVP of clinical operations. The EMD Serono vet also led clinical operations at Parabilis Medicines , a cancer biotech co-founded by Greg Verdine that was once known as FogPharma . After the Kintara agreement, TuHURA then merged with Kineta and picked up a VISTA-inhibiting monoclonal antibody that’s now codenamed TBS-2025 . → Palvella Therapeutics is back for the second time in the last three editions of Peer Review, hiring Kent Taylor as SVP of sales. Taylor had the same responsibilities at Arcutis Biotherapeutics and was VP of sales, dermatology for the inflammation & autoimmunity group at Incyte . We told you that Jennifer McDonough jumped to Palvella last month as SVP of market access and patient services. → Mineralys Therapeutics CEO Jon Congleton has punched his ticket to the board of directors at Avalyn Pharma , the pulmonary fibrosis specialist that filed its S-1 paperwork this week. It’s his second appointment in as many weeks after joining the board at Immunic . → Stoke Therapeutics has added Pfizer veteran Clare Kahn to its board of directors. Kahn has spent the last five years on the board at Solid Biosciences , where Stoke CEO Ian Smith is chairman. Stoke and Biogen are currently testing a Dravet syndrome drug called zorevunersen in a Phase 3 study. → The non-opioid pain experts at Latigo Biotherapeutics have elected Insmed CFO Sara Bonstein to the board of directors. Insmed had a rough go of it this week as the prospects of a label expansion for Brinsupri continue to dim . Meanwhile, Latigo is hoping its Nav1.8 inhibitor can set up a showdown with Vertex ’s Journavx . → Cleveland, OH-based cell and gene therapy maker Abeona Therapeutics has made room for Syndax Pharmaceuticals CFO Keith Goldan on the board of directors. Goldan held the CFO post at Optinose from 2017-22.

Boehringer\'s innovation unit head Paola Casarosa, Ph.D., spoke to Fierce after addressing the company\'s annual press conference.\n Boehringer Ingelheim may have been on a spending spree for licensing deals so far this year—but the German pharma has plenty more items on its shopping list.The company kicked off 2026 penning a deal worth over $120 million biobucks with genomics-focused Variant Bio to discover new targets for cardiorenal and kidney disease. In fact, that agreement was secured just weeks after Boehringer signed another kidney collaboration, offering Rectify Pharmaceuticals up to $448 million to partner on a preclinical program.By the end of January, the Big Pharma had also clinched a 1.05 billion euro ($1.26 billion) biobucks deal for a preclinical inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) bispecific antibody from China\'s Simcere, before rounding off February with a $500 million pact with U.K.-based Sitryx to find a fresh oral treatment approach to a variety of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.It may sound like Boehringer’s blossoming pipeline has enough new additions to keep the company busy, but the drugmaker still has its eye on “a number of exciting things,” according to Paola Casarosa, Ph.D., the member of Boehringer’s board who oversees the company’s innovation unit.“Our key focus is on T-cell engagers, as well as ADCs,” Casarosa told Fierce during a recent interview at Boehringer’s headquarters.Neither of those deal-making priorities will come as a surprise. Boehringer recently took its DLL3/DC3 T-cell engager (TCE), called obrixtamig, into a phase 3 study for small-cell lung cancer. And when it comes to antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), the company not only agreed a $991 million deal to license a candidate from South Korea’s AimedBio last year, but also committed around $31 million to a new R&D facility in Switzerland specifically focused on ADCs.“We still believe ADCs are an exciting modality,” Casarosa said. “We\'ll continue to also look into [next]-generation payloads and new mechanisms of connecting those to the antibodies.”Other red-hot R&D fields Boehringer is watching include bispecific and trispecific antibodies, plus in-vivo CAR-T therapies. “I see a lot of emerging new platforms, particularly in geographies like China,” Casarosa said. While in-vivo CAR-Ts and TCEs both came to prominence in oncology, biopharmas have increasingly been exploring their potential to treat autoimmune diseases. Boehringer “absolutely” wants to take advantage of the autoimmune potential of cell therapies, according to Casarosa.“It requires more fine tuning … with a different attention to what is the tolerability and the side effects,” she added. “But I think with B cell depletion, we have seen the most exciting data in autoimmunity [in] years. And so that\'s not something to miss.” A seller’s market When it comes to restocking the pipeline, Casarosa said Boehringer prefers to source drug candidates that haven’t yet made it into the clinic.“That\'s not written in stone … but we find it works better [when] you have the chance to work together.”This preclinical mentality is certainly useful from a financial perspective, with mid- and late-stage assets increasingly securing hefty price tags from Big Pharmas.“Let\'s be frank, today it’s pretty much a seller’s market,” Casarosa said. “There are a number of companies that are looking for ways to replenish their portfolio. We\'re in the fortunate position of not necessarily needing late-stage [drugs], so we can be a bit more creative.”Judging by the recent crop of deals, Boehringer prefers to find partners rather than buy companies outright. But Casarosa denied this is a deliberate strategy—pointing to the past acquisitions of bacterial cancer therapy company T3 Pharmaceuticals in 2023 and Swiss cancer biotech Amal Therapeutics in 2019, among other examples.“It\'s not that we’ve shied away from that,” she said. “We look at what do we want—is it a totality or is it rather a single asset? You also need to understand what the company on the other side wants.”Picking partners over buyouts doesn’t mean that Boehringer is short of cash when it finds the right option. The drugmaker spent 6.4 billion euros ($7.4 billion) on R&D last year, an 8.3% year-over-year increase. At 22.9% of the 27.8 billion euros ($32 billion) in sales that Boehringer brought in over 2025, Chief Financial Officer Frank Hübler described this R&D-spend ratio as “investing above our peer level.”The company offered a peek at these financials during a March 25 press conference at Boehringer’s headquarters in Ingelheim, Germany. The sprawling site covers 762,000 square meters and, with around 10,000 people employed there, feels like a town in itself. A tour of the site offers vivid illustrations of both Boehringer’s past and future. On the one hand, Fierce walked past a 1960s-built manufacturing facility that is still able to churn out up to 800,000 tablets of the diabetes med Jardiance an hour. Further along is a seven-story chemical innovation plant expected to open in 2027 to turbocharge the company’s small molecule development. Boehringer has been based in Ingelheim since its founding in 1885. From 28 employees manufacturing tartaric acid salts used by pharmacies and dyeing works, the company now employs a workforce of around 54,000 spread over 76 countries. Despite its vast range of human and animal pharmaceutical products and status as a major global player, the company is still owned by the family of its founder Albert Boehringer. One of the ways the company is keeping itself on the front foot is by moving into one of the most-hyped areas of biopharma R&D—obesity. Arguably the most-watched readout this year for Boehringer will be the phase 3 data from an obesity study of survodutide, its Zealand-partnered GLP-1/glucagon agonist.During the press conference, Casarosa batted away suggestions that Boehringer should be concerned by investors’ underwhelming reaction to weight loss data from Zealand’s Roche-partnered amylin analog petrelintide or the Danish biotech’s GLP-1/GLP-2 agonist.“Our collaboration with Zealand is a traditional licensing deal, meaning we are in charge of developing survodutide,” she told journalists at the conference. “The rest of their portfolio is outside this collaboration. So from that perspective, I don\'t see necessarily any connectivities [with] what is happening with survodutide.”That doesn’t mean that Casarosa can totally ignore what’s happening in the wider obesity space. Novo Nordisk’s rollercoaster stock price across its obesity readouts and sales forecasts serves as a reminder of the high stakes for pharmas that enter the weight loss arena.“I am admittedly not a finance person, but when I see some of these things, I shiver, right?” she told Fierce. “What is driving this madness?”But despite the high expectations for survodutide’s phase 3 readout this year, Casarosa points to the mid-stage data from the drug, which showed near 19% weight loss at 46 weeks. In a separate study, up to 83% of adults treated with survodutide achieved a statistically significant improvement in a liver disease called metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH).“Our position remains clearly [that there is] a differentiation on what is the glucagon component and what is the liver health component,” Casarosa said. “The phase 2 data were very clear in showing this strong benefit. I do know the importance of the liver on the totality of the cardiometabolic space, and that\'s where I believe we have some strength.”Still, Casarosa wouldn’t get drawn into a conversation about whether survodutide will be able to blow the amassing armada of GLP-1 competitors out of the water.“I don\'t know how many GLP-1s are in development—it\'s a huge amount,” she said. “So it would be arrogant to say that we clearly have a value proposition that’s going to top everything else.”Survodutide isn’t Boehringer’s only clinical-stage bet in the obesity space. There’s also a triple agonist—although Casarosa was tight-lipped to Fierce about the exact targets of the candidate. Along with a recent push into eye disease, Boehringer certainly hasn’t settled into its comfort zone. And this forward-thinking R&D strategy appeared to have paid off with two recent commercial success stories. The latter half of last year saw Boehringer score FDA approval for HER2-selective tyrosine kinase inhibitor Hernexeos as the first orally administered targeted therapy available for patients with previously treated HER2-mutated lung cancer. Meanwhile, the company also secured the nod from regulators for Jascayd, a PDE4B inhibitor that became the first new therapy for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) in more than a decade.Those launches contributed to a 7.4% rise in human pharma sales over the year, with Jardiance and the IPF pill Ofev continuing to grow, according to the company.Does this recent proof of turning R&D input into commercial success make Casarosa’s job a bit easier?“This company has always been tremendously committed to innovation in the good as well as in the less good days,” she said. “So [the approvals], of course, are a very strong boost of energy and self-confidence to the whole R&D organization.”“That\'s something that gives a lot of a lot of pride,” she added.