Hey Snackers,
Finally, some useful science.
Researchers studying cockroach milk, buried underwear, kissing, and the proper way to blow your nose were among this year’s winners of the Ig Nobel Prizes — the annual awards for research that makes you laugh before making you think.
Among the discoveries: Cockroach milk is surprisingly nutritious, underwear can help measure soil health, and humans (as well as neanderthals) have apparently been kissing for millions of years.
Stocks fell slightly Tuesday as oil ticked higher after Iranian-backed Houthis attacked Saudi oil facilities.
Novartis’s $12 billion reality check
Novartis dropped just under 14% on Tuesday in its worst trading day in years, shedding about $45 billion in market cap after the Swiss pharmaceutical major said that a closely watched drug for a rare neuromuscular condition failed a late-stage trial.
The drug, del-desiran, was the crown jewel of Novartis’s $12 billion acquisition of Avidity Biosciences in a deal completed in February. At the time, the company said the deal “potentially unlocks multi-billion-dollar opportunities.”
The late-stage trial results were the latest in a rough stretch of clinical readouts for the company.
Last week, its experimental cardiovascular drug pelacarsen also failed a Phase III trial. The bright spot was remibrutinib which succeeded in two Phase III trials for multiple sclerosis.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Novartis also paused eight clinical trials of an experimental cell therapy in late August, after three patients died. All told, that’s two major Phase III misses, one win and a clinical-trial pause in about a week.
To investors, a failed clinical trial is years of research spending — and potentially billions in future sales — gone down the drain. Rare disease drugs, like del-desiran, are particularly lucrative for drugmakers in part because they can command very high price tags.
Despite US regulators who are at-times skeptical of trial data, global sales of rare disease drugs are projected to grow and exceed $400 billion by 2032, according to a recent report.
The Takeaway
Novartis, not unlike many of its Big Pharma peers, is racing to find its next generation of blockbusters as older medicines lose patent exclusivity.
Increasingly, that means buying them. Rather than betting solely on drugs developed in-house, pharmaceutical giants routinely spend billions acquiring smaller biotechs with promising pipelines, hoping a few of those bets become blockbusters big enough to justify the price tags.
Rare-disease drugs are particularly prominent in that dealmaking: many of the medicines forecast to lead the category in 2032 were acquired or licensed from elsewhere. Del-desiran’s failure doesn’t make the entire acquisition worthless (two other late-stage drug candidates came with it) but it does show just how quickly a $12 billion bet can start looking really costly.
The rise of bot bragging
“As no-code tools make agents easier to build, the new flex isn't merely using AI — it's claiming an entire digital workforce. Amid anxiety about AI and jobs, "I manage 20 agents" sends a reassuring message: I'm not being replaced by AI. I'm the boss of it.” – Rani Molla, Business Insider
That’s how many passenger cars were sold in China in August 2026, down around 24% year-over-year, according to the China Passenger Car Association, Reuters reports.
What else we’re Snackin’
Road Rage, a short film currently in production, casts autonomous vehicles as violent antagonists, The Verge reports.
Women accounted for nearly all of the job gains in August, underscoring their growing force in the labor market.
Bloomberg Businessweek takes a look at how a skeleton crew is figuring out how to unwind every last bit of Spirit Airlines.
Elizabeth Holmes is the subject of a new documentary from comedian Nathan Fielder and director Lance Oppenheim.
Snack Fact of the Day
Cockroaches are older than dinosaurs. They predate dinosaurs by more than 150 million years, and humans by more than 300 million.
Wednesday:
Earnings due out premarket from Chewy.
American Eagle slated to release quarterly results after the close.