Novartis Acquires Full Rights to Sironax Brain Delivery Platform

Axsome Therapeutics reported new clinical data in major depressive disorder and Alzheimer's disease agitation at a leading psychiatry congress. The presentations focused on key programs in Axsome's central nervous system pipeline aimed at treating mood and neuropsychiatric symptoms, and management highlighted how the new findings may inform future study designs and regulatory interactions for these indications. The company is advancing multiple late-stage clinical programs, including AXS-05, AXS-12, AXS-14, and several solriamfetol indications, and the fresh congress results give more clinical detail around AXS-05 in depression and Alzheimer's agitation, feeding the thesis that future CNS indications can broaden the revenue mix beyond Auvelity, Sunosi and SYMBRAVO. Axsome, a mid-sized US pharmaceuticals player with a market cap of $11.2b, competes alongside larger CNS-focused drug developers such as Biogen and Eli Lilly and smaller specialists. The same update also stress tests a key risk: management must commercialise several CNS assets at once while running high R&D and SG&A spending, with payer scrutiny and strong rivals in both categories.

AbbVie shared new real-world and pediatric safety data for VRAYLAR in major depressive disorder and bipolar I at Psych Congress 2026. The findings covered routine clinical practice settings, including patients with complex comorbidities and underserved groups, while the pediatric data added information on safety and use in younger patients with mood disorders. AbbVie, a research-focused biopharmaceutical group with a US$466.6b market cap, positions VRAYLAR within a broad portfolio targeting chronic conditions including complex psychiatric disorders. The company said the next concrete checkpoint will be how these data feed into prescribing and label use over the next year, particularly uptake of newly approved low dose VRAYLAR in pediatric and adjunctive MDD settings, trackable in reported prescription trends and segment sales through 2027.

Teva Pharmaceuticals announced new data showing that healthcare providers prioritize drowsiness risk, the duration of available long-term response data and drug-drug interaction profile when selecting a VMAT2 inhibitor for tardive dyskinesia in patients aged 55 and older. In a discrete choice experiment, 489 healthcare providers ranked somnolence risk, accounting for 26.8% to 36.2% of decision-making weight, and short-term symptom improvement, at 24.4% to 29.5%, as their top priorities, followed by dose formulation at 16.7% to 20.2% and drug-drug interaction risk at 14.4% to 17.3%. Applying those preferences across four patient profiles, AUSTEDO, also known as deutetrabenazine, had the highest predicted choice probability, driven mainly by somnolence risk, duration of long-term response data and drug-drug interaction. The findings were presented at Psych Congress, held September 15 to 19, 2026, in New Orleans. A separate interim analysis from the IMPACT-TD Registry found that among patients with probable tardive dyskinesia who remained untreated with any VMAT2 inhibitor for 24 months, roughly 89% to 96% experienced at least a mild global impact and 60% to 74% experienced moderate-to-severe impact, while 55% to 69% reported stable or worsening severity with no evidence of spontaneous resolution.