Typically, state intervention in pharmaceuticals is aimed at drug cost control which, if taken to extremes, can border on nationalism.

A slow start to the year in health care is usually tempered by announcements that build up to investor conference season. However, early 2022’s plethora of negative announcements may continue biotech’s unloved status of 2021.

The news desert over the holidays meant that any Phase III clinical study announcement would be closely examined. Unfortunately, BridgeBio’s shock Phase III failure was made worse by elusive explanations.

While the Omicron variant does not bode well for 2022, vaccine boosters and oral antivirals are the products from the pharmaceutical sector that should keep on giving. Even if partisan analysts choose to forget them.

In a rare disease indication, clinical trial efficacy in Phase III should be the ticket to successful sales. But safety issues warrant careful consideration.

As well as hedging investors’ portfolios against the effects of pandemic waves, the stock prices of Pfizer and Merck & Co seem to be negatively correlated to each other, just as their pandemic-related revenues are to their traditional drug sales.

Are three FDA clinical holds in less than four days a symptom of lax safety programs at some biotech companies? And what does the latest publication on Aduhelm say about the relationship between safety and accelerated approval?

While the stock prices of a few biotech companies have advanced significantly as a result of their pandemic efforts, a broad biotech stock index has underperformed the pharmaceutical index. Why?

AstraZeneca’s controversial switch to for-profit COVID-19 vaccine pricing and the costs of the Alexion acquisition clouded its strength in oncology. Meanwhile, Clovis's tight grip on its marketing purse strings may have hit revenue recovery.

Pfizer’s pandemic-related windfalls might be prompting some investors and analysts to try steering the resulting largesse towards their own favored acquisition candidates.

The comparison of a company’s performance during a windfall period, like one with pandemic-related sales, with a more normal period, can be uncomfortable. Even more so if the underlying business has its weaknesses.

Johnson & Johnson’s divisional recoveries were in contrast to the declines of Biogen’s franchises but both companies had a competitive pressure and a drug pricing issue.