The Food and Drug Administration said this week that more doses of Eli Lilly $LLY’s popular diabetes and weight loss drugs will be in limited supply through the end of June. Johnson & Johnson $JNJ’s recent bets on heart devices helped boost sales, but the company’s total revenue in the first quarter of the year failed to meet analysts’ expectations. And more than 250 websites that were hawking fake Ozempic and other weight loss drugs got shut down.
Check out those stories and more pharma news highlights.
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Eli Lilly $LLY, the world’s most valuable pharmaceutical company, can’t keep up with soaring demand of its popular diabetes and weight loss drugs. The Food and Drug Administration updated its drug shortage database to include most doses of the pharma giant’s Mounjaro and Zepbound. The agency said all doses except for 2.5 milligram injections of each medication will be in limited supply through the second quarter of the year, due to increased demand.
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Eli Lilly $LLY announced that the drug behind Zepbound was found to help alleviate sleep apnea in patients with obesity in late-stage clinical trials. If federal regulators expand the approved use of Zepbound to include sleep apnea, the medication could join Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy in being covered by Medicare.
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Johnson & Johnson $JNJ’s recent investments in medical devices helped boost sales, but the company’s total revenue in the first quarter of the year failed to beat Wall Street expectations. The company’s medical device segment experienced the biggest growth in the company during the three months ending March 31, up 4.5% year-over-year to $7.8 billion.
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UnitedHealth $UNH Group, the largest health insurance company in the U.S., was the top performer in S&P 500 after it reported higher-than expected revenue amid the fallout of a massive cyberattack earlier this year.
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BrandShield, a cybersecurity firm that detects trademark infringement and counterfeit sales online, said it shut down more than 250 websites that were hawking fake weight loss drugs.
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The activist hedge fund Shah Capital blasted the leadership of Novavax for not leveraging concerns some people have about mRNA vaccines to boost sales of its own traditional, protein-based COVID-19 vaccine.
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A European Union regulator found no evidence of a “causal” link between GLP-1 drugs — such as Ozempic and Wegovy — and suicidal thoughts. The European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC) announced the findings of its nine-month probe of the issue on April 12.
