Some of the biggest news and trends captured in PharmaVoice’s newsletter this week. Sign up here to receive the newsletter daily.
Keytruda reigns supreme
GLP-1s have quickly become a pharma sensation — but neither of the industry’s blockbuster weight loss drugs knocked Keytruda from its top sales perch in 2025.
Merck & Co.’s behemoth cancer checkpoint inhibitor raked in over $35 billion last year, retaining its position as pharma’s best-selling drug. Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro claimed the No. 2 spot with $23 billion in sales while Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic was close behind at over $20 billion.
Keytruda’s dominance isn’t likely to last as it approaches a patent cliff and weight loss drugs continue their climb. But the landmark therapy will have long legs in oncology, especially as a combo treatment.
This week, we zoomed in on its stellar results in bladder cancer when paired up with Pfizer and Astellas’ ADC Padcev and where the duo could have an impact next.
Sandoz’s biosimilar blitz
The timing couldn’t have been better. Generics giant Sandoz announced this week that it would set up a separate business arm entirely devoted to biosimilars, girding for a series of Big Pharma patent losses that could drive a lucrative copycat market over the next few years. With 13 biosimilars already on the market, the Swiss drugmaker boasts an extensive pipeline of more to come.
Among the 27 biosimilar candidates in Sandoz’s arsenal are versions of Merck & Co.’s Keytruda, AbbVie’s Skyrizi, Sanofi and Regeneron’s Dupixent and Johnson & Johnson’s Darzalex.
Recent draft guidance from the FDA could smooth Sandoz’s path to approvals by making the biosimilar R&D process more efficient. Yesterday, we explored the biosimilar market’s growing presence and how it’s becoming a more prominent business strategy in pharma.
Where are the mega-deals?
Anyone hoping for a glut of biopharma deals in 2026 surely hasn’t been satisfied with the scant M&A activity so far. Of the seven deals announced since the start of the year, only four cracked the $1 billion mark. The largest transaction has been Gilead Sciences’ purchase of cell therapy maker Arcellx for $7.8 billion, demonstrating that cancer is still a magnet for M&A dollars.
But when drugmakers do come to the dealmaking table, they’re still using the M&A playbook to grow out their pipelines and bring R&D prospects through the clinical gantlet. French drugmaker Servier made a big splash in rare brain cancers this week by announcing a deal that falls in line with how the company has built its oncology pipeline over the last few years.
