For many readers, the topics featured in this year’s roundup of top stories won’t come as much of a surprise. Look no further than our top two stories of the year and you’ll see that the GLP-1 craze and Big Pharma layoffs took center stage in 2024.
Those issues commanded much of the industry's collective attention this year, but, beyond those headlines, several other topics sparked interest among the reader base. Two stories in particular highlighted the industry’s ability to give back during hard times: Sanofi’s pledge to employees who are diagnosed with cancer landed at No. 3, while Pfizer’s pre-Hurricane Milton aid pledge landed just outside of the top 10.
Elsewhere, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis became an emerging focus for the industry, and Madrigal Pharmaceuticals' Rezdiffra broke ground in that indication with its FDA approval in March. The launch is gaining steam and yielded this editor’s favorite headline of the year.
With top stories No. 4 and No. 6 of the year, you’ll again see the reader's enthusiasm for GLP-1 drug launches. Both pieces focused on the overwhelming demand for the booming diabetes drugs from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. Rest assured, both companies have spent mightily to get a handle on the issue, and their manufacturing investments have been a constant focus throughout the year.
Layoffs featured throughout the rest of the list: Besides the issue rising to our No. 2 story of the year, a story about cuts at Bristol Myers Squibb landed at No. 7, and Fierce’s January coverage of Bayer’s restructuring rounded out the list at No. 10.
Meanwhile, big-name personnel moves always garner quite a lot of reader attention, so when Novartis nominated former BMS CEO Giovanni Caforio to become its next CEO, many of you were keen to read Angus Liu’s coverage of what that might mean going forward.
No list of top pharma stories is complete without controversy, especially between two pharma giants. When Johnson & Johnson brought allegations that a former staffer took thousands of files to a new role at Pfizer, thousands of readers wanted to get the latest.
We hope you enjoy reading through Fierce Pharma’s top stories of the year. See below for the full top 10 and honorable mentions.
We’ll have some additional coverage going up on the website over the next week, but we’ll largely be on a publishing break until the new year. Enjoy your holiday season, and see you in 2025.
The top 10
Special reports and honorable mentions:
Fierce Pharma’s regulatory trackers for the first half and second half of 2024