Pharma execs look back on the first half of 2026

Between the continued rise of GLP-1s, the Trump Administration pushing psychedelic medicine closer to a reality, and battles over the 340B drug discount program, pharma companies have had a busy 2026 so far.

Looking to the rest of the year, drugmakers will have to focus on issues such as the new Most-Favored-Nation drug pricing policy and a push toward domestic manufacturing.

With so much going on in the industry, Healthcare Brew asked pharma leaders to reflect on how they’ve fared so far this year and what their plans are for the rest of 2026.

Setting sights on the US. AstraZeneca had a big start to the year. In February, the company began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

“It was a visible signal of the role the US plays in AstraZeneca’s future and the confidence we have in the company’s next chapter,” Rick Suárez, SVP, US president, and head of the US biopharmaceuticals business unit at AstraZeneca, told Healthcare Brew.

The UK-based company announced plans in July 2025 to invest $50 billion in US manufacturing by 2030 amid pharmaceutical tariff threats from the Trump administration.

“We have already broken ground at a new manufacturing facility in Virginia, the largest single investment in a site we have ever made,” Suárez said.

AstraZeneca also announced in 2023 a goal to bring 15 new medicines to the US market by 2030, later upping that to 20 drugs and $80 billion in revenue. Suárez told us the company is halfway to accomplishing that goal. The drugmaker saw 16 positive Phase 3 clinical trial result readouts in 2025, according to its FY25 earnings.

When it comes to the second half of 2026, Suárez projected the industry will have to have “a more serious conversation” about the value of medicines.

“The next phase will be less about single endpoints in isolation and more about whether we are changing the future health of the patient,” he said. “Are we preventing complications? Are we reducing risk across connected diseases? Are we intervening early enough to avoid the events that create the greatest patient and economic burden?”

Drugmakers will also likely be “pushed harder” to provide evidence for the efficacy of their drugs and whom they benefit most, as well as how they impact the health system more broadly, Suárez added.

“The companies that lead in the next decade will not only be the companies with strong pipelines,” he said. “They will be the companies that help healthcare systems use innovation better.”

Evolving GLP-1s. Novo Nordisk has also had a big year. The Denmark-based company launched pill versions of its hit GLP-1 medications Ozempic and Wegovy.

The drugmaker launched the Wegovy pill in January and saw 1.3 million prescriptions written for it in Q1 2026, according to the company’s earnings.The pill version of Ozempic launched in early May.

The company has submitted an application for FDA approval of what may be the next iteration of its GLP-1 portfolio: an investigational medicine called CagriSema. The drug is a combination of semaglutide (the active ingredient in Ozempic) and another blood sugar regulating hormone called cagrilintide, which the company says leads to superior weight loss and blood sugar control compared to Ozempic.

In terms of headwinds, Ed Cinca,Novo Nordisk’s SVP of marketing and patient solutions, told Healthcare Brew that a big challenge so far this year has been the rise of misinformation surrounding GLP-1s.

“When a medication for a chronic disease becomes a cultural trend, the volume of misinformation skyrockets,” he said. “Suddenly, our job demands that we step up to correct public narratives and direct consumers to safe, evidence-based clinical facts…This challenge became acutely relevant with the rise of compounded semaglutide.”

Telehealth company Hims & Hers came under fire in early 2025 for airing a commercial during the Super Bowl that contained potentially misleading information about its compounded version of semaglutide, Morning Brew reported last year.

Novo Nordisk has gone back and forth with Hims & Hers this year over its compounded semaglutide. After suing Hims & Hers, the two companies eventually agreed to a partnership in which the telehealth company sells Novo’s branded version of semaglutide on its platform.

Moving forward, Cinca said Novo is moving away from marketing semaglutide as just a weight loss medication and focusing on the drug’s other benefits in conditions like cardiovascular disease.

“Ultimately, we are looking beyond weight altogether toward longevity, where weight loss is just a byproduct of a broader health purpose,” he said.