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.

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.