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.

With the latest Delta variant wave in the rear-view mirror, vaccine and antiviral sales, and their impact on full-year guidance, are likely to remain the big swing factors in third-quarter earnings season.

Patient selection is held out as the Achilles heel of clinical trial success. But a surprise and fortunate finding in Pfizer’s gene therapy trial has already resulted in tightened recruitment criteria, thanks to genetic analysis.

What on earth would make a biotech company change the primary endpoint half way through a Phase III program and not discuss it with the FDA? There are at least two scenarios, neither of them good.

Many of the many biotech companies that raised money to develop and repurpose their molecules to address the pandemic have started to unwind those efforts. What will this mean for the sector’s valuation?

The stock price performances of the top two coronavirus vaccine producers are inversely correlated to their sales and pipelines. There seems to be an expectation of declining coronavirus vaccine sales for some, but not for others.

From clinical trials to in-person sales calls, the pharmaceutical value chain has been tested by the COVID-19 pandemic, but has held up. Nevertheless, recent friction within this chain may be more than a passing irritation.

It is not only gene therapy companies that have found European payers hard to convince of the value of their products. Amarin’s proposed European pricing may lead to another US company exit.

Big pharmaceutical franchises may be recovering from the pandemic, but the extent of the untreated backlog of cancer patients from 2020 is still an important unknown driver even after second-quarter earnings season, and smaller cancer companies may still be bearing the brunt of COVID-19’s effects.

Lilly’s second-quarter earnings announcement relegated its core business in favor of its experimental Alzheimer’s disease drug. This diverted attention away from competitive reimbursement challenges that may be affecting its insulin business.

Pfizer’s earnings were skewed by its coronavirus vaccine for the second quarter running while GSK’s vaccine sales were helped by the catch-up on pediatric immunization schedules. Sales of influenza vaccines may come to the fore in the second half.

Oncology diagnoses and therefore revenues are returning as we emerge from the pandemic, but the recovery also brings the challenges of reduced diagnostic and eventually vaccine revenues.