One of the main ques­tions for drug­mak­ers en­ter­ing 2026, and one they hope tilts in their fa­vor, is whether the US will suc­cess­ful­ly pres­sure Eu­rope to raise the price it pays for drugs.

Three weeks in­to the year, the an­swer de­pends on who you ask.

At the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum in Davos this week, Pfiz­er CEO Al­bert Bourla said in a CN­BC in­ter­view that the com­pa­ny was still ne­go­ti­at­ing its Eu­ro­pean prices.

“The US price go­ing down is hap­pen­ing now, the US price go­ing up in Eu­rope, we will see,” he said Tues­day. Bourla added that the rea­son Eu­ro­pean talks are in flux is be­cause the com­pa­ny doesn’t have an agree­ment with the bloc, de­scrib­ing it as a “cum­ber­some process.”

John­son & John­son, which has sev­er­al drugs ap­proved for mul­ti­ple myelo­ma, praised the FDA's just-re­leased draft guid­ance on how the agency will al­low the use of min­i­mal resid­ual dis­ease as a pri­ma­ry end­point for ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­provals of treat­ments for the blood can­cer.

The nine-page draft pub­lished Tues­day spells out how drug de­vel­op­ers can use MRD as an end­point in sev­er­al ways, in­clud­ing via a sin­gle-arm tri­al, with the on­go­ing tri­al con­tin­u­ing to eval­u­ate pro­gres­sion-free-sur­vival or over­all sur­vival to sup­port a full ap­proval. An FDA ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee in 2024 vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly to al­low the use of MRD as an end­point.

J&J pi­o­neered much of the ev­i­dence be­hind the use of MRD, EVP John Reed said on Wednes­day's earn­ings call, "so we’re ex­cit­ed that that is an op­tion."

A biotech fund­ed by Shang­hai Fo­s­un Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal is li­cens­ing a pre­clin­i­cal as­set de­vel­oped by In­sil­i­co Med­i­cine in the NL­RP3 space, which has gar­nered in­dus­try in­ter­est in re­cent months.

Hyg­tia Ther­a­peu­tics will get half the glob­al rights for In­sil­i­co’s oral can­di­date, called ISM8969, in a deal that could to­tal up to $66 mil­lion. Hong Kong-list­ed In­sil­i­co is set to re­ceive $10 mil­lion with­in 30 days of the deal clos­ing. It will be re­spon­si­ble for fil­ing an IND and run­ning a Phase 1 study in Parkin­son’s dis­ease. Hyg­tia will then take over fur­ther de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion.

NL­RP3 is a pro­tein that plays a key role in the in­nate im­mune sys­tem. Its ab­nor­mal ac­ti­va­tion is thought to dri­ve neu­roin­flam­ma­tion in dis­eases like Alzheimer’s and Parkin­son’s.

In­tra­Bio said Wednes­day that its treat­ment im­proved mo­tor func­tion for a rare ge­net­ic dis­or­der called atax­ia-telang­iec­ta­sia as part of a piv­otal study.

The Austin, TX-based biotech told End­points News it plans to sub­mit an ap­pli­ca­tion to the FDA in April that would seek ap­proval for its drug, Aqneur­sa. Known gener­i­cal­ly as N-acetyl-L-leucine, Aqneur­sa was first ap­proved in 2024 to treat neu­ro­log­i­cal symp­toms re­lat­ed to an­oth­er rare dis­ease called Nie­mann-Pick dis­ease type C.

There are cur­rent­ly no ap­proved treat­ments specif­i­cal­ly for atax­ia-telang­iec­ta­sia.

Sev­en­ty-three pa­tients with the dis­or­der were en­rolled as part of the Phase 3 tri­al, and they re­ceived ei­ther Aqneur­sa or place­bo every day. Af­ter 12 weeks of treat­ment, pa­tients who re­ceived Aqneur­sa saw a -1.92-point im­prove­ment on a mea­sure of mo­tor func­tion called the Scale for the As­sess­ment and Rat­ing of Atax­ia, ac­cord­ing to the re­sults re­port­ed Wednes­day. Mean­while, pa­tients who re­ceived place­bo saw a -0.14-point score change. That dif­fer­ence was sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant with a p-val­ue of p<0.001, meet­ing its pri­ma­ry end­point.

As the cal­en­dar turns from JPM to quar­ter­ly re­ports, earn­ings bell­wether John­son & John­son makes its re­turn for 2026. The fo­cus this time? How bio­phar­ma will re­act to a slate of most fa­vored na­tion deals with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

J&J ex­ec­u­tives es­sen­tial­ly shrugged off any fi­nan­cial im­pact from its MFN deal that was signed ear­li­er this month, say­ing it will be “even­ly dis­trib­uted through­out the year.” When com­bined with fourth-quar­ter sales that near­ly reached $25 bil­lion — up 9.1% from the same pe­ri­od a year ear­li­er — it sets up a strong 2026 for the com­pa­ny, CFO Joseph Wolk said on Wednes­day’s in­vestor call.

“We an­tic­i­pate fair­ly con­sis­tent op­er­a­tional sales growth through­out the year,” Wolk said.

There are count­less dis­eases lack­ing a sin­gle good treat­ment, but drug­mak­ers are still herd­ing in­to the same tar­gets, par­tic­u­lar­ly in chas­ing af­ter megablock­busters.

George Yan­copou­los, the out­spo­ken co-founder and chief sci­en­tif­ic of­fi­cer of Re­gen­eron, is one of the loud­est crit­ics of this trend. “Even if they make some­thing you take twice as less fre­quent­ly, is that what they should be do­ing?” he said in an in­ter­view. “Give me a new drug that treats a new dis­ease.”

Herd­ing is­n't new, but it has got­ten worse. On­ly 16% of top drug­mak­er­s' port­fo­lios were in crowd­ed tar­gets in 2000, a per­cent­age that quadru­pled by 2020, a McK­in­sey analy­sis found. The last few years have on­ly brought more at­ten­tion to a hand­ful of pro­grams that have pipeline-in-a-prod­