Pharmaceutical Executive Daily: Novo Partners with Anthropic

Welcome to Pharmaceutical Executive Daily, your quick briefing on the top news shaping the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry.

In today's Pharmaceutical Executive Daily, Novo partners with Anthropic to tackle drug discovery bottlenecks with AI, a biotech financing roundup covers Sling Therapeutics' $123 million Series C for its thyroid eye disease candidate and Circle Pharma's $92.5 million Series E for its oral cancer therapy, and Phil Ford of IQVIA argues that pharma's medical content strategy needs to shift from a pipeline to a loop.

Novo partners with Anthropic to co-develop AI tools aimed at drug discovery bottlenecks, deploying Claude Science across select R&D workflows to speed biological reasoning and the path from research to new medicines. The collaboration pairs Anthropic's frontier AI models with Novo's computational and domain expertise, with both companies emphasizing data governance and human oversight throughout. The deal marks Novo's third major AI partnership of 2026, following deals with OpenAI in April and Amazon Web Services in August.

Two clinical-stage biopharma financings close this week as investors back next-generation autoimmune and oncology candidates. Sling Therapeutics raises $123 million in a Series C led by Forbion, with participation from TPG Life Sciences Innovations and new investor Sectoral Asset Management, to advance linsitinib, an oral IGF-1R inhibitor and the only one in late-stage development, through the Phase III Orbit trial in thyroid eye disease. Separately, Circle Pharma raises $92.5 million in a Series E led by The Column Group, with Eli Lilly and Company among the investors, to advance CID-165, a first-in-class oral macrocyclic cyclin D1 RxL inhibitor moving toward early clinical development in ER-positive breast cancer.

Finally, Phil Ford, vice president and general manager of Global Medical Affairs and HCP Engagement at IQVIA, argues that pharma companies need to replace their linear medical content "pipeline" with a continuous "loop" connecting creation, review, distribution, and measurement. Ford contends that as physicians increasingly turn to large language models instead of manufacturer channels, speed alone won't fix an approach that already produces content much of which goes unused, and that engagement data should instead guide what gets commissioned, reviewed, and retired.

Thanks for listening to Pharmaceutical Executive Daily. For more updates and in-depth analysis, visit PharmExec.com.