A century ago, compounding pharmacies helped people get bespoke drugs. Now these less-regulated businesses are fueling the peptide boom

Robert F Kennedy Jr is sitting stiffly in Joe Rogan’s podcast studio, inside the influencer’s enormous Texas mansion. Atypically for Rogan’s guests, Kennedy still cloaks himself in the trappings of authority; in a blue suit and pink novelty tie featuring kayakers paddling upstream, he is a stark contrast from Rogan, who sports a biceps-hugging T-shirt depicting a cowboy and an outline of Texas, from the “regenerative wellness” brand Ways2Well.

This was in February, when Kennedy, amid his nationwide Take Back Your Health tour, was pushing his new red-meat-heavy food pyramid on to Americans. For an hour and a half, the two chatted casually about everything from soda pop to medical scams that supposedly fund Boko Haram.

Europe and US risk being outpaced on innovation, as happened in the car industry, warns Pascal Soriot

AstraZeneca must operate at “Chinese speed” to ensure it does not suffer the fate of the western automotive industry by losing out to more innovative rivals, the drug company’s boss has said.

The FTSE 100 company is watching the rise of China’s pharmaceutical industry closely and collaborating to take drugs to global markets, but its chief executive, Pascal Soriot, said the US and European pharmaceutical sectors must focus on increasing the speed of innovation.

Danish pharma company says Eli Lilly using outdated trial data to make its weight-loss drugs appear more effective

Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk said on Tuesday it is suing arch US rival Eli Lilly over “false and materially misleading” adverts for its competing weight-loss and anti-diabetes treatments.

The Danish pharmaceuticals heavyweight complained that the US group – which makes rival weight-loss treatments Zepbound and Mounjaro – “intentionally selected outdated studies” that compared Lilly’s highest doses against lower doses of Novo Nordisk’s medicines.