Drugs for obesity, Alzheimer’s, and infectious diseases herald a new era of innovation in the pharma business
By Alice Park
I IT’S BEEN A WHILE SINCE THE pharmaceutical industry last saw a year like 2023, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a slew of groundbreaking and life-changing medications that repre-c sent a surge in innovation—and a potential boon to the drugmakers’ bottom lines.
Eisai and Biogen kicked off the year with the approval of lecanemab (Leqembi) for Alzheimer’s disease, which is the second medication designed to treat the root causes of the memory-robbing condition, but appears to be the most effective. GSK and Pfizer dropped the first-ever vaccines for RSV in adults, giving older and pregnant people a way to protect themselves—and, in the case of expectant mothers, their newborns as well—from a potentially deadly respiratory disease. Biogen and Sage Therapeutics received approval for a first-ever oral treatment for postpartum depression, zuranolone (Zurzuvae), and the FDA also allowed biotech companies Intellia Therapeutics and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals to start late-stage testing of the first gene-editing treatment, using CRISPR technology, inside patients.
And the escalating demand for a new group of weight-loss drugs will only continue to explode with the approval of Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide (Zepbound), which appears to trigger the most weight loss of any medication to date. “I’d categorize the past year as a little above average on the innovation cycle,” says Damien Conover, director of equity strategy at Morningstar, an equity research firm.
While there is no single driver explaining the spate of approvals, many of these drugs represent a continuing trend toward biologic-based medicines, which involve cellular- or gene-oriented strategies—like theo mRNA COVID-19 vaccines—that—tend to address the basic mechanisms that cause disease. In comparison, small-molecule drugs, them foundation of medicinal chemistry that built the pharmaceutical industry and remains an important platform as well, rely on testing a variety of chemicals to find ones that have the right reaction that can address symptoms or disease. The biologic approach
