GSK CEO Luke Miels laid out the drug­mak­er’s vi­sion for how it will meet its 2031 sales fore­cast and ad­dress the up­com­ing patent cliff for its block­buster HIV drug do­lute­gravir.

“We need to be more prod­uct-cen­tric as a com­pa­ny,” Miels said Wednes­day dur­ing GSK’s earn­ings call with the me­dia. “So I can't stress this enough: For us, ac­cel­er­at­ing R&D is our biggest op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate val­ue as a com­pa­ny.”

This is Miel­s' first earn­ings re­port since Em­ma Walm­s­ley left the job at the end of last year. Ob­servers will be keep­ing a sharp eye on how Miels leads the UK phar­ma to meet its 2031 out­look of more than £40 bil­lion in sales.

Ve­r­a­der­mics head­ed out of the gates with an ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing that gar­nered $256 mil­lion in gross pro­ceeds, a big­ger-than-ex­pect­ed de­but that sug­gests in­vestors may be hun­gry for a re­bound in biotech list­ings.

Ve­r­a­der­mics, which starts trad­ing Wednes­day on the NYSE un­der the tick­er “MANE,” sold 15 mil­lion shares at $17 apiece. That’s 1.65 mil­lion shares more than orig­i­nal­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed and $1 above the high end of the range it set last week.

The New Haven, CT-based biotech is in mul­ti­ple Phase 3 tests with an oral, ex­tend­ed-re­lease ver­sion of mi­nox­i­dil, com­mon­ly known as Ro­gaine. The can­di­date, VD­PHL01, is be­ing de­vel­oped for pat­tern hair loss in men and women. The hair re­growth mar­ket could be vast, with a large pa­tient pop­u­la­tion that has few phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal op­tions. Hair trans­plants have picked up in pop­u­lar­i­ty in re­cent years.

Hims & Hers is bring­ing Grail's can­cer test to its con­sumer health plat­form, mark­ing a sig­nif­i­cant step to­ward mass adop­tion of a tech­nol­o­gy that's shown progress while re­main­ing un­der sci­en­tif­ic de­bate.

Grail, a pi­o­neer in a field that screens for dozens of can­cers in a blood sam­ple, has sold 475,000 tests since 2021. The deal will put the test in front a large au­di­ence that in­cludes two and a half mil­lion sub­scribers, as part of Him­s' ex­pan­sion in­to pre­ven­ta­tive lab test­ing — well be­yond just the treat­ments for hair growth, weight loss and sex­u­al health that made it fa­mous.

In an in­ter­view with End­points News, Grail pres­i­dent Joshua Of­man framed the di­rect-to-con­sumer chan­nel as an im­por­tant piece of the com­pa­ny's strat­e­gy. As an­oth­er pil­lar, Grail last week filed for FDA ap­proval of its test, which if grant­ed would open the door to in­sur­ance and Medicare cov­er­age.

No­vo Nordisk is look­ing in­to ac­quir­ing or de­vel­op­ing a long-act­ing GLP-1 drug that could com­pete with Pfiz­er's month­ly obe­si­ty shot. It has al­so cut a hand­ful of drugs from its pipeline, so it cer­tain­ly has room to add more can­di­dates.

Pfiz­er beat No­vo in the fe­ro­cious bat­tle to ac­quire the long-act­ing GLP-1 de­vel­op­er Met­sera in No­vem­ber. The da­ta on Pfiz­er's month­ly shot, which came out Tues­day, were some­what limp, and some have ques­tioned whether the com­pa­ny over­paid.

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