The world’s most productive biopharmas have gone through some major changes in the past five years. In Fierce Pharma’s latest analysis, BioNTech and Moderna beat their biopharma peers with the highest 2021 revenues per employee. The 2021 cohort as a whole showed improved productivity over 2016, although several companies experienced declines. In this episode, we'll discuss our special report on the most productive pharmas.

Also under discussion is Biogen's tumultuous year, which was spurred by its disastrous Alzheimer’s disease drug launch. Now Biogen is reportedly considering Theravance co-founder Mathai Mammen , M.D., Ph.D>, as its new CEO. The company supposedly wants to emphasize scientific know-how in choosing its next leader. 

To learn more about topics in this episode: 

• The top 10 most productive biopharma companies
• J&J research vet Mathai Mammen a top contender in Biogen's hunt for a new CEO: Stat
• Merck nails phase 3 sotatercept win, making good on its $11.5B Acceleron buy
• AstraZeneca's COVID-19 nasal vaccine spray comes up a bust in small study
• Fitbit embeds health, activity data into Pretaa's substance abuse recovery app
• Merck & Co., in busy morning, taps Moderna's therapeutic cancer vaccine, Royalty in schizophrenia deal 
• Orthofix, SeaSpine to combine into $700M orthopedics player in merger of equals

The Top Line is produced by senior multimedia producer Teresa Carey with managing editor Querida Anderson and senior editors Annalee Armstrong, Ben Adams, Conor Hale and Eric Sagonowsky. The sound engineer is Caleb Hodgson. The stories are by all our “Fierce” journalists. Like and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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