Pre­dict­ing which of the cur­rent block­busters will as­cend to new heights is any­one’s game, and one that high­lights the cur­rent dy­nam­ics of the in­dus­try. On Fri­day it’s Glob­al­Da­ta’s turn to pick out the ther­a­pies that it be­lieves will come out on top in some in­tense­ly com­pet­i­tive spaces.

Hu­mi­ra may still top the chart for best-sell­ing drugs in the world, but Keytru­da is set to over­take the shrink­ing fran­chise in around five years time — with four oth­er drugs set to get ahead of Ab­b­Vie’s biggest cash cow.

The $22.2 bil­lion es­ti­mate for Keytru­da is among the high­est num­ber put for­ward by an­a­lysts. Eval­u­ate pegged world­wide sales in 2024 at $17 bil­lion, while Mizuho’s Mara Gold­stein’s fore­cast was that it would sur­pass $20 bil­lion by then.

Mer­ck’s R&D en­gine — which has pumped out a se­ries of clin­i­cal wins en­abling new fil­ings — is cru­cial to its growth, ac­cord­ing to Glob­al­Da­ta phar­ma an­a­lyst Ke­shali­ni Sabarat­nam. Just days ago the phar­ma gi­ant cel­e­brat­ed an­oth­er mile­stone in the form of an OK in Chi­na for front­line non-small cell lung can­cer.

“It has re­ceived mar­ket ap­provals for over 20 on­col­o­gy in­di­ca­tions in the US, and is con­tin­u­ing to ex­pand in­to new in­di­ca­tions and mar­kets glob­al­ly,” she said in a state­ment.

What Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb lagged in Op­di­vo 2025 sales, though, it is like­ly mak­ing up in num­bers. The #2, #3 and #4 drugs on the list will be its by then, in­clud­ing the blood thin­ner Eliquis ($18.7 bil­lion), Cel­gene’s mul­ti­ple myelo­ma drug Revlim­id ($12.4 bil­lion), and the PD-1 check­point ($12 bil­lion).

J&J’s Im­bru­vi­ca comes next at $11.9 bil­lion, with an­a­lysts en­cour­aged by the BTK in­hibitor’s use in mul­ti­ple can­cers as well as chron­ic graft-ver­sus-host-dis­ease.

Bik­tarvy’s #6 po­si­tion just af­ter Hu­mi­ra con­tin­ues to un­der­score Gilead’s dom­i­nance in the HIV mar­ket, with $10 bil­lion pen­ciled in.

An­a­lysts al­so ap­pear un­fazed by the threats posed by ri­val CDK4/6 drugs from No­var­tis and Eli Lil­ly against Pfiz­er’s Ibrance, just trail­ing Bik­tarvy. While the drug on­ly gar­nered $2.8 bil­lion in 2018, the pre­dict­ed 2024 sales is as high as $9 bil­lion.

Round­ing out the list are J&J’s Ste­lara and Eli Lil­ly’s Trulic­i­ty, the on­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the crowd­ed pso­ri­a­sis and di­a­betes field, which are filled with oth­er block­buster con­tenders.

The researcher behind base-editing is out with what some scientists are hailing as the biggest advancement in CRISPR technology since that 2016 breakthrough: “prime editing.” The new molecular gadget is capable of erasing any base pair and stenciling in another and cutting or adding long segments of DNA without breaking both strands of the helix.

David Liu, base editing pioneer and founder of Beam Therapeutics, published the findings in Nature alongside Andrew Anzalone. They estimated that the breakthrough “in principle” puts 89% of human diseases in purview — although experts cautioned that human therapies were a long way off.

For the past three years Frazier Healthcare Partners’ Bhaskar Chaudhuri has been carefully and quietly grooming Arcutis Therapeutics, a new dermatology play he co-founded to deliver topical formulations of well-known drugs. Now that the biotech is poised to enter Phase III, he’s being joined by a marquee syndicate for its $94.5 million Series C.

HBM Healthcare Investments, Vivo Capital, BlackRock, Omega Funds, Pivotal BioVentures, and Goldman Sachs jumped on board, joining Bain Capital Life Sciences, OrbiMed and RA Capital Management in backing Arcutis’ lead topical cream for plaque psoriasis.

The remedy for the most common side effect for one of the most common multiple sclerosis drugs is simple: aspirin.

Taking aspirin with Biogen’s Tecfidera will reduce the flush, a sometimes painful form of red skin irritation, many patients experiences. The problem is that the aspirin has to be taken at least 30 minutes before Tecfidera, turning a simple twice-a-day, one-dose oral drug into a staggered two-drug regimen.

Despite a head start, when Bristol-Myers Squibb and its pioneering checkpoint inhibitor Opdivo suffered a key lung cancer setback in 2016, they found themselves relegated to the backseat as Merck’s Keytruda seized the wheel on the road to immunotherapy stardom. Bristol-Myers has since suffered blow after blow in its quest to take a big slice of the lucrative market, peppered with some small successes. On Tuesday, the New Jersey drugmaker touted positive data from a Phase III open-label study in a bid to carve itself a piece of the frontline lung cancer market.