• by Les Luchter , February 25, 2026

A month after teaming with former NFL quarterback Tony Romo to market its prostate cancer drug Nubeqa, Bayer has sued Johnson & Johnson (J&J’s) for false advertising of that firm’s rival drug Erleada.

Romo appears with his prostate cancer survivor father in Nubeqa’s Highlights Real campaign, in which they provide play-by-play commentary on the activity of other prostate cancer patients.

In its lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Bayer cites J&J’s “false advertising campaign” as consisting of a press release, issued a few days after the Romo campaign began, plus  “two presentations made available on its Medical Connect website.”

The suit, which alleges that J&J made “false claims regarding the efficacy of Nubeqa…in an effort to increase its market share in a concentrated and increasingly competitive prostate cancer treatment market,” seeks preliminary and permanent injunctions against J&J in addition to damages. 

"Litigation does not change data," J&J told Reuters in a statement. "Our analysis was designed to meet rigorous guidance on real-world evidence, and this legal action demonstrates Bayer’s obvious misunderstanding of methodological frameworks and real-world evidence principles."

Bayer has been counting on Nubeqa as a key driver of the resurgence of its pharmaceutical business.

“With Nubeqa…we may have the largest product ever in the history of our company,” pharma division president Stefan Oelrich told the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference last month, stating that the drug was “poised to become the number one product in prostate cancer.”

Another competitor in the field for advanced prostate cancer is Xtandi, a joint product of Pfizer and Astellas.

In another legal development concerning cancer, Bayer last week offered $7.25 billion to settle a decade-old case over claims that the weedkiller Roundup, which it had taken on in its Monsanto merger, causes the disease.

The move comes on the heels of the U.S. Department of Justice in December urging the Supreme Court to erase billions of dollars in Roundup liabilities, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency last February approving another Bayer herbicide, dicamba, that had previously been blocked by federal courts, according to a U.S. Right to Know. That report details numerous instances of former Bayer lobbyists now working for the Trump Administration.