SAN FRAN­CIS­CO — Pfiz­er CEO Al­bert Bourla and oth­er promi­nent in­dus­try fig­ures at the JP Mor­gan Health­care Con­fer­ence urged US re­forms to keep up with Chi­na, rather than pro­tec­tion­ism.

If Chi­na’s rise was the un­of­fi­cial theme of last year’s con­fer­ence, this year's event has so­lid­i­fied the coun­try’s grow­ing role in sup­ply­ing the world’s med­i­cine chest. Since the start of 2026, nine deals be­tween West­ern phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and Chi­nese com­pa­nies have been pub­licly an­nounced, as multi­na­tion­als in­creas­ing­ly hunt for drug tar­gets in Chi­na in­stead of in the US and Eu­rope.

At a lunch with re­porters on Mon­day, Bourla said the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is fo­cus­ing too much on how to block Chi­nese drugs and not enough on how to help US drug de­vel­op­ers com­pete against them.

SAN FRAN­CIS­CO — In his third year as CEO of Bris­tol My­ers Squibb, Chris Boern­er kicked off the JP Mor­gan Health­care Con­fer­ence with plans for six piv­otal read­outs of new drugs in 2026.

This ar­ray of po­ten­tial med­i­cines for every­thing from heart dis­ease to can­cer to neu­ropsy­chi­a­try will be key in re­plac­ing rev­enues from cur­rent best­sellers Op­di­vo and Eliquis, which are ex­pect­ed to po­ten­tial­ly face gener­ic com­pe­ti­tion in 2028. The $114 bil­lion phar­ma has been on a deal­mak­ing run to bol­ster its pipeline and port­fo­lio since Boern­er took the helm, ac­quir­ing Rayze­Bio for $4.1 bil­lion, Mi­rati Ther­a­peu­tics for $4.8 bil­lion, and Karuna Ther­a­peu­tics for $14 bil­lion.

Boern­er sat down with End­points News on Tues­day, the day af­ter his JPM pre­sen­ta­tion, for a wide-rang­ing dis­cus­sion of the year ahead and his take on the fu­ture of Bris­tol My­ers and the phar­ma in­dus­try. The fol­low­ing tran­script has been edit­ed for length and clar­i­ty.

Ther­mo Fish­er will be phas­ing out op­er­a­tions at its lab­o­ra­to­ry prod­ucts fac­to­ry in Asheville, NC by the end of 2026. And the ser­vice provider will be lay­ing off 421 em­ploy­ees, ac­cord­ing to a WARN