What are the key takeaways from this Biotech Hangout episode?

Key insights include: **MFN Revenue-Sharing Mechanism:** Pfizer's FOIA-revealed MFN agreement includes a provision requiring net revenue sharing with the US government when drug prices rise in other jurisdictions. This structure incentivizes global price equalization rather than purely lowering US prices, making it a constructive framework for biopharma companies to engage with proactively rather than resist outright.; **Viking VK2735 Maintenance Dosing:** VK2735 injection achieved 19% placebo-adjusted weight loss at 21 weeks, retaining 97% of that reduction when patients switched to biweekly maintenance dosing and 90% when transitioning to monthly dosing. Investors tracking obesity assets should monitor the Phase 3 VANQUISH trial, set to begin early 2027, as the pivotal efficacy and tolerability readout.; **Sjogren's Market Sizing:** The Sjogren's market represents approximately $5B in US systemic disease opportunity and $20B in symptomatic disease. Amgen's dasodilumab Phase 3 data showed rapid onset with no thrombotic events or opportunistic infections, differentiating it from prior CD40-ligand drugs through its engineered Fc-free fusion protein structure that eliminates thrombosis risk.

What did Yaron Werber and Brian Scorney discuss on Biotech Hangout?

Biotech Hangout Episode 197 covers XBI market pressure from long-short fund degrossing, Most Favored Nation drug pricing agreements, FDA commissioner confirmation hearings, and clinical data from Vertex, Amgen, Viking Therapeutics, Seldex, and Ionis across kidney disease, Sjogren's, obesity, urticaria, and IgAN indications. Key topics include: **MFN Revenue-Sharing Mechanism:** Pfizer's FOIA-revealed MFN agreement includes a provision requiring net revenue sharing with the US government when drug prices rise in other jurisdictions. This structure incentivizes global price equalization rather than purely lowering US prices, making it a constructive framework for biopharma companies to engage with proactively rather than resist outright.; **Viking VK2735 Maintenance Dosing:** VK2735 injection achieved 19% placebo-adjusted weight loss at 21 weeks, retaining 97% of that reduction when patients switched to biweekly maintenance dosing and 90% when transitioning to monthly dosing. Investors tracking obesity assets should monitor the Phase 3 VANQUISH trial, set to begin early 2027, as the pivotal efficacy and tolerability readout..

How long is this episode of Biotech Hangout?

This episode is 58 minutes long. SignalCast provides an AI-generated summary so you can get the key insights in about 3 minutes.

Biotech Hangout

Episode 197 - September 25, 2026

September 25, 2026

58 min episode · 2 min read

Yaron Werber,Brian Scorney,Matt Klein

Episode

58 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Relationships, Investing, Leadership

AI-Generated Summary

Published Sep 26, 2026

Key Takeaways

✓MFN Revenue-Sharing Mechanism: Pfizer's FOIA-revealed MFN agreement includes a provision requiring net revenue sharing with the US government when drug prices rise in other jurisdictions. This structure incentivizes global price equalization rather than purely lowering US prices, making it a constructive framework for biopharma companies to engage with proactively rather than resist outright.
✓Viking VK2735 Maintenance Dosing: VK2735 injection achieved 19% placebo-adjusted weight loss at 21 weeks, retaining 97% of that reduction when patients switched to biweekly maintenance dosing and 90% when transitioning to monthly dosing. Investors tracking obesity assets should monitor the Phase 3 VANQUISH trial, set to begin early 2027, as the pivotal efficacy and tolerability readout.
✓Sjogren's Market Sizing: The Sjogren's market represents approximately $5B in US systemic disease opportunity and $20B in symptomatic disease. Amgen's dasodilumab Phase 3 data showed rapid onset with no thrombotic events or opportunistic infections, differentiating it from prior CD40-ligand drugs through its engineered Fc-free fusion protein structure that eliminates thrombosis risk.
✓Seldex Barzolvolimab Safety Profile: The mast cell depleter barzolvolimab showed only two drug-attributable anaphylaxis cases across 1,500 patients versus three cases in the smaller placebo group, suggesting background hypersensitivity drives anaphylaxis risk rather than the drug itself. The Phase 3 data at 24 weeks showed continued improvement from week 12, with 52-week data and an FDA filing expected in 2026.
✓Ionis Platform Reassessment: Ionis faces three concurrent headwinds: TTR cardiomyopathy ASO failure when added to oral stabilizers, Lp(a) trial failure despite 80% target reduction, and ongoing ASO-versus-siRNA narrative pressure. However, their factor B drug for IgAN, partnered with Roche, presents a near-term catalyst at ASN, with management signaling best-in-class potential among complement inhibitors.

What It Covers

Biotech Hangout Episode 197 covers XBI market pressure from long-short fund degrossing, Most Favored Nation drug pricing agreements, FDA commissioner confirmation hearings, and clinical data from Vertex, Amgen, Viking Therapeutics, Seldex, and Ionis across kidney disease, Sjogren's, obesity, urticaria, and IgAN indications.

Key Questions Answered

•MFN Revenue-Sharing Mechanism: Pfizer's FOIA-revealed MFN agreement includes a provision requiring net revenue sharing with the US government when drug prices rise in other jurisdictions. This structure incentivizes global price equalization rather than purely lowering US prices, making it a constructive framework for biopharma companies to engage with proactively rather than resist outright.
•Viking VK2735 Maintenance Dosing: VK2735 injection achieved 19% placebo-adjusted weight loss at 21 weeks, retaining 97% of that reduction when patients switched to biweekly maintenance dosing and 90% when transitioning to monthly dosing. Investors tracking obesity assets should monitor the Phase 3 VANQUISH trial, set to begin early 2027, as the pivotal efficacy and tolerability readout.
•Sjogren's Market Sizing: The Sjogren's market represents approximately $5B in US systemic disease opportunity and $20B in symptomatic disease. Amgen's dasodilumab Phase 3 data showed rapid onset with no thrombotic events or opportunistic infections, differentiating it from prior CD40-ligand drugs through its engineered Fc-free fusion protein structure that eliminates thrombosis risk.
•Seldex Barzolvolimab Safety Profile: The mast cell depleter barzolvolimab showed only two drug-attributable anaphylaxis cases across 1,500 patients versus three cases in the smaller placebo group, suggesting background hypersensitivity drives anaphylaxis risk rather than the drug itself. The Phase 3 data at 24 weeks showed continued improvement from week 12, with 52-week data and an FDA filing expected in 2026.
•Ionis Platform Reassessment: Ionis faces three concurrent headwinds: TTR cardiomyopathy ASO failure when added to oral stabilizers, Lp(a) trial failure despite 80% target reduction, and ongoing ASO-versus-siRNA narrative pressure. However, their factor B drug for IgAN, partnered with Roche, presents a near-term catalyst at ASN, with management signaling best-in-class potential among complement inhibitors.

Notable Moment

Matt Klein noted that Amgen's acquisition of Horizon Therapeutics was framed entirely around TEPEZZA at the time, yet dasodilumab and DUPLISNA — both Horizon pipeline carryovers — may ultimately generate more long-term value, underscoring how secondary pipeline assets in acquisitions routinely outperform the headline drug thesis.

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Episode Transcript

You're listening to Biotech Hangout, a live and unedited weekly discussion of all the latest news in our industry with a group of biotech leaders and experts. I'm Sam Fazeli. My co hosts today are Yaron Werber, Brian Scorney and Matt Klein. For more information about our hosts and guest speakers, or to listen to the most recent episodes, as I always do, when I'm not on, please go to biotechhangout.com. Right, so we're going to start off talking a little bit of as usual market and policy regulation stuff. The sector has been, you know, when you look at the XBI doesn't feel like it's been suffering or anything, maybe down a little bit from its peak for the past two or three weeks. But it seems like a lot of long short funds are suffering because of the way that some of the smaller cap names have been performing. So, but really can't think of any particular driver on that, aside from whatever, we can always point to macro stuff going on. So I just thought maybe we could talk about a little bit about how you guys feel about the current state of the market. Obviously, IPOs are still happening. I've counted 22 trading. And then of course, we have another one today that's opened up or indicating up, which is great, meaningfully up. And the average money being raised in these IPOs is the highest that we've seen ever for the biotech sector. Well, I can't say ever because I didn't go beyond the 2019 or so, but still higher than the go go days of 2021, etc. So all pretty good signs here in terms of the IPO market, even if the number of deals is not going to be getting anywhere near what we saw in those days. So do you guys want to have a quick any comments on this before we move on to most favored nation and revenue sharing, etc, that Matt's gonna help us think through? If not, we could just go straight to Matt. We could talk about it. Yeah. Go on. Yeah. I was just going say, yeah, I think it's been a rough week. Obviously, the sector overall has done very well for the year and a really bad day, middle of the week and a couple of follow on days of selling. Is it a trend to continue? I think there's a lot of questions about those. Obviously, as you brought up, a big degrossing effect. I mean, just long shorts just seems like everywhere I hear is really getting kind of squeezed. And is that degrossing of those long short books, is that driving sort of XBI down? You know, there's also an interest rate dynamic. I mean, I can't tell you how many conversations I've had over the last couple of months of like, just how impervious the XBI has seemed to see in the midst of, escalating interest rates. And, you know, now …

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