Who were the winners at this year's diabetes meeting?

The American Diabetes Association's annual meeting delivered its usual deluge of new data on treatments for the fast-growing disease. Our sister publication, FierceBiotech, put together a special issue about the latest studies, and we've rounded up some of those stories for you, along with other media coverage and company news from the event. See FierceBiotech.com for more.

Novo Nordisk ($NVO) has begun to regroup from one of the biggest regulatory setbacks of the year. In February, the FDA dealt the Danish drugmaker a major blow in denying approval of its blockbuster hopeful, Tresiba, seeking cardiovascular outcomes data on the long-acting insulin that will delay the U.S. launch of the drug by several years. Report

A head-to-head study between Johnson & Johnson's ($JNJ) new diabetes drug Invokana and Merck's ($MRK) Januvia delivered an advantage to the former, which demonstrated better blood-sugar improvements in type II diabetes patients with a 300 mg dose. The 100 mg dose of Invokana matched Januvia's performance. All patients were also using the standard therapy metformin. In another study, the J&J drug showed similar results in comparison with Sanofi's ($SNY) Amaryl. Release

Some existing drugs got a wallop from new data on Eli Lilly's ($LLY) experimental drug dulaglutide. The new drug delivered better blood-sugar control than Bristol-Myers Squibb ($BMY) and AstraZeneca's ($AZN) Byetta; Merck's Januvia; and the standby treatment metformin. Report

Sanofi's Lantus is the behemoth of diabetes drugs, the biggest seller in the category with $6.5 billion in sales last year. And that has been a big advantage for the French drugmaker as it suffers generic erosion on other meds. But Lantus, too, will one day go off patent. Good thing its next-generation version of the drug delivered some positive safety data in a new study; analysts see Sanofi persuading Lantus patients to switch to the new med, now dubbed U300, once it's approved by regulators. Report | Report

Some good news for makers of existing drugs in the SGLT2 class: Though Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly presented some strong data on their experimental therapy empagliflozin, it's difficult to see how the drug stands out from its future rivals, including Johnson & Johnson's Invokana and AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squibb's Forxiga. Report

Special Reports: 10 Top-selling Diabetes Drugs - 2012 | Top Diabetes Drug Pipelines of 2012