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.

In the insular world of biotech, a spectacular failure can sometimes stay on any executive’s record for a long time. But for David Meek, the man at the helm of FerGene’s recent implosion, two questionable exits made way for what could be an excellent rebound.

Meek, most recently FerGene’s CEO and a past head at Ipsen, has become CEO at Mirati Therapeutics, taking the reins from founding CEO Charles Baum, who will step over into the role of president and head of R&D, according to a release.

For a first-time fund, Jeito Capital talks a lot about continuity.

Rafaèle Tordjman had spotlighted that concept ever since she started building the firm in 2018, promising to go the extra mile(s) with biotech entrepreneurs while pushing them to reach patients faster.

Coincidentally, the lack of continuity was one of the sore spots listed in a report about the European healthcare sector published that same year by the European Investment Bank — whose fund is one of the LPs, alongside the American pension fund Teacher Retirement System of Texas and Singapore’s Temasek, to help Jeito close its first fund at $630 million (€534 million). As previously reported, Sanofi had chimed in €50 million, marking its first investment in a French life sciences fund.

After a busy weekend at #ESMO21, which included a big readout for its KRAS drug adagrasib in colon cancer, Mirati Therapeutics is ready to keep the pressure on competitor Amgen with lung cancer data that will undergird an upcoming filing.

In topline results from a Phase II cohort of its KRYSTAL-1 study, adagrasib posted a response rate of 43% in second-line-or-later patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer containing a KRAS-G12C mutation, Mirati said Monday.

Exelixis added a thyroid cancer indication to its super-seller Cabometyx’s label on Friday — months before the FDA was expected to make a decision, and days before the company was set to unveil the final data at #ESMO21.

At a median follow-up of 10.1 months, differentiated thyroid cancer patients treated with Cabometyx (cabozantinib) lived a median of 11 months without their disease worsening, compared to just 1.9 months for patients given a placebo, Exelixis said on Monday.