Viking Therapeutics (NASDAQ: VKTX) and Madrigal Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: MDGL) are highly prominent biotech companies that have a lot in common. Both focus on treating metabolic illnesses like liver disease and obesity, and, until recently, despite their promising pipeline programs, both were lacking any products on the market to generate revenue.

Now, the picture is shifting, and the odds are good that one of these players will pull ahead of the other, thereby becoming the better biotech-stock investment. The only questions are, which will it be, and for how long will it last? Let's dive in.

Madrigal's claim to being the better biotech stock is its drug Rezdiffra, which is the first medicine approved to treat metabolic-associated steatohepatitis, (MASH, formerly known as NASH) a chronic and degenerative liver disease. There hasn't been enough time since Rezdiffra's approval on March 14 to know how well it will perform in terms of revenue. But as the only game in town for the moment, it'll have the best possible access to its target market.

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Source Fool.com