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Gilead Sciences Inc. posted a 34 percent increase in fourth-quarter profit, trouncing Wall Street expectations, as sales of its blockbuster hepatitis C drugs soared in Japan and offset lower sales in the U.S. The maker of Harvoni, the first once-daily, single-pill regimen for hepatitis C, and predecessor drug Sovaldi, has been propelled by the lucrative franchise since Sovaldi was launched at the end of 2013. They’re the main reason the company’s revenue has tripled in just two years, a rare accomplishment in the industry. (Johnson, 2/2)

Pfizer Inc. on Tuesday reported better-than-expected results for its fourth quarter thanks to last year’s acquisition of Hospira Inc. and strong sales of new drugs, but the pharmaceutical giant offered soft guidance for 2016. (Dulaney and Rockoff, 2/2)

Remember Axovant Sciences, Exhibit A in last year's biotech bubble? Its story is deflating, metric by metric. Axovant, the biotech creation of 30-year-old hedge-funder Vivek Ramaswamy, was last year's most controversial health care IPO, perhaps. It miraculously turned its $5 million purchase of an abandoned GlaxoSmithKline Alzheimer's drug into a valuation of nearly $3 billion on the day after its IPO in June. (Misen, 2/2)

Johnson & Johnson, already facing lawsuits over products from surgical mesh to antipsychotic drugs, began trial Tuesday over claims the talcum powder it marketed to women gave some of them cancer. The world’s largest maker of health-care products faces accusations by the family of a woman who died that it knew decades ago that talc, the Earth’s softest mineral, was linked to ovarian cancer. The verdict may set the tone for whether J&J fights or tries to settle 1,200 lawsuits over products such as baby powder. (Feeley, Fisk and Cortez, 2/2)