Novo Nordisk CEO talks GLP-1 pill at JPMorgan conference

A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Healthy Returns newsletter, which delivers the latest health news right to your inbox. Subscribe here to receive future editions.

Good morning from San Francisco! It’s the third day of the annual JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, the largest gathering of biotech and pharmaceutical executives, investors and analysts in the United States.

The sun is shining this week and so is the optimism in the industry. Many drugmakers, investors, and advisors are already suggesting that 2026 will be a better year — or at least better — than the last, with big drug prices and tariff headwinds largely stabilized, interest rates falling, and, most importantly, spurring the emergence of science from companies large and small.

This week has been relatively quiet on the deal-making front. No major mergers have been announced, but that doesn’t mean they’re not on the way. Meanwhile, companies are planning for the year ahead, highlighting important business and drug pipeline updates.

Here’s a summary of what I heard from conversations with several major CEOs.

Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar The company’s brand-new oral GLP-1 anti-obesity drug, the Wegovy pill, and its namesake injectable counterpart will allow it to expand the incretin market in 2026, he told me in an interview Monday.

But he said this year “will be a year of price pressure” following Novo Nordisk’s drug pricing deal with President Donald Trump in November, as well as the launch of cheaper generic versions of some of the company’s drugs in certain international markets.

“When the price drops, you immediately feel the impact,” Doustdar said. But he added that the company is trying to generate volume growth to offset these price cuts, which “will not happen overnight.”

Doustdar added that in addition to advancing its own pipeline, Novo Nordisk will also be active on the business development side to “see if someone else out there has something that can complement our own pipeline.” The comments come after Novo Nordisk lost a heated bidding war with Pfizer over obesity biotech Metsera last year.

Bristol Myers Squibb CEO Chris Boerner The company has the potential to introduce up to 10 new products by the end of the decade, he told me in an interview on Tuesday. The comments come as Bristol Myers Squibb prepares to offset losses from the loss of the exclusivity cycle for blockbuster drugs over the next few years, which will allow generic competitors to come to market.

“We’ve intentionally built this portfolio to be pretty diverse, and so while we don’t know if everything will work, we feel really good about the substrate we have in late-stage development, and the mid-stage pipeline is progressing nicely as well,” he said.

Boerner highlighted 11 late-stage program results for six potential new products in 2026. This includes upcoming Alzheimer’s psychosis trials, called the Adept program, for the company’s prescription drug Cobenfy, which is approved in late 2024 for the treatment of adult schizophrenia.

When it comes to business development, Boerner said the company is “casting a wide net.” He added that he hopes to build on core therapeutic areas that Bristol Myers Squibb knows well, look at different stages of development and focus on “the best, most innovative science we can find” to combat hard-to-treat diseases.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla He said the company was “all in on obesity” following its acquisition of obesity biotech Metsera for nearly $10 billion last year. Speaking to a group of reporters on Monday, Bourla said the company plans to launch 10 different late-stage studies of Metsera’s obesity products by the end of the year, including a study that started in November.

He also said there were several things Pfizer didn’t take into account when negotiating the Metsera deal, including the huge out-of-pocket market for obesity drugs where patients are willing to pay cash for treatments. Bourla likened this opportunity to the experience of Viagra, which Pfizer introduced in 1998.

“Both Lilly and Novo offered their sales and had significant sales outside of the refund system. We were basically estimating very limited sales outside of the US,” Bourla said. “We’re now seeing it work almost like ‘Viagra,’ where people were willing to pay and buy, but there were no refunds whatsoever.”

Some of the other pharmaceutical news that came up during the conference:

• Eli Lilly And Nvidia On Monday, the two companies Joint investment up to $1 billion We have been working for more than five years to create a laboratory in San Francisco focused on using artificial intelligence to accelerate drug discovery.
• AbbVie on Monday agreement reached With the Trump administration lowering some drug prices and investing $100 billion domestically over the next decade in exchange for immunity from tariffs and “future pricing mandates.” The company is now among more than a dozen major drugmakers that have struck similar deals with Trump as part of his “most favored nation” policy.
• AbbVie it also said Monday that it has agreed to make an upfront payment of $650 million to license an experimental cancer treatment from China’s RemeGen, a deal that could eventually be worth about $5.6 billion.

Feel free to send any tips, suggestions, story ideas, and data to Annika in a new email: annika.constantino@versantmedia.com.