Some 12 years after first NDA submission, Kyowa Hakko Kirin tries again to secure US approval for troubled Parkinson's drug, but some analysts remain unsure of commercial potential and the company itself is progressing a successor.

A look back at the Scrip stories that piqued the most interest for our readers in 2018. 

Nearly all the meters on pharma's pipeline are reading critical. With licensing and M&A increasingly a series of high-priced auctions, Big Pharma is casting about, often desperately, for new business-development strategies. And one place they're beginning to look is corporate venture capital, traditionally a way to provide drug companies with a window on new technologies. But that means finding a way to break through the seemingly impenetrable wall between corporate venture investing and other corporate and research activities. Thus, companies have embarked on a number of different strategies, ranging from the traditional to the radically new and aggressive. Getting the equity investor and the asset-hungry pharma partner to co-exist peacefully has aroused plenty of both skepticism and confusion Nevertheless, there's still a promising way for drug companies to get value from start-ups beyond mere equity appreciation--investing de-prioritized drug candidates, not merely capital.

Interest in small cap stocks is dwindling on the part of buy-side funds., This is partly due to funds' need for liquidity. But last year's gain of over 50% by stocks of large pharmaceutical companies makes the smaller, riskier stocks even less attractive now. Portfolio manager Skip Klein of T. Rowe Price was a casualty of the relatively poor performance of small cap stocks.