Some of the biggest news and trends captured in PharmaVoice’s newsletter this week. Sign up here to receive the newsletter daily.
DAC attack
There’s a cooler version of ADCs emerging in cancer R&D. Called DACs, or degrader-antibody conjugates, the new modality combines the power of targeted protein degraders with ADCs, and is increasingly driving deals by Big Pharmas.
Roche laid down $20 million last week to deepen a partnership with C4 Therapeutics that could eventually be worth up to $1 billion and is centered around DAC development. The company is joining several large pharmas — including Bristol Myers Squibb and Merck & Co. — investing in early-stage DAC research.
But not all Big Pharma companies are jumping on the same R&D bandwagons, and instead, many have become more specialized. This week, we looked closer at how pharma giants are leaning into their unique R&D strengths.
CEO-to-worker ratio growth
In 1965, the average CEO of a major U.S. company brought home 21 times the compensation of a standard employee at their firm, according to the Economic Policy Institute. By 2024, that ratio shot up to 281 times the typical worker’s salary, with multiple peaks and valleys in between.
Big Pharma has ridden that wave, lavishing its CEOs with multimillion-dollar packages that leave even its skilled employee base well behind. J&J’s Joaquin Duato, Pfizer’s Albert Bourla, Eli Lilly’s David Ricks and Merck & Co.’s Rob Davis were the top earners in 2024 compared to their employees, especially as their businesses thrived in the dawn of new obesity drugs and other sales juggernauts.
This week, we explored what some Big Pharma CEOs pulled in through 2025 and the sizable pay raises they picked up along the way.
Pancreatic cancer victories
Revolution Medicines took a victory lap this week with a clinical readout that could trigger a “transformative advance” in pancreatic cancer, according to the company’s CEO. In a pivotal phase 3 trial, Revolution’s RAS-targeting candidate daraxonrasib nearly doubled the survival rate to 13.2 months compared to 6.7 months with chemotherapy alone.
Drug researchers at Actuate Therapeutics also reported a pancreatic cancer win this week. In a phase 2 trial, the one-year survival rate doubled for patients taking the biotech’s potential first-in-class pancreatic cancer treatment, which targets GSK-3β.
While oncology researchers make headway in tough-to-treat indications, they’re also in pursuit of challenging targets. This week, we looked at the industry’s quest to drug p53 and how success could impact cancer R&D.
