No­vo Nordisk is ramp­ing up its foot­print in Ire­land with a planned ex­pan­sion of its Athlone fac­to­ry to make its We­govy pill, the com­pa­ny con­firmed to End­points News.

The Athlone site will sup­ply the pill to mar­kets out­side of the US, No­vo said, with­out pro­vid­ing de­tails on how much it was in­vest­ing or when the ex­pan­sion will be com­plet­ed.

The Dan­ish drug­mak­er’s We­govy pill ver­sion was launched last month and flew off the shelves, with pre­scrip­tion num­bers in­creas­ing by rough­ly 500% in the pill’s sec­ond week. An­a­lysts re­main cau­tious, not­ing that a week’s num­bers don't equal a trend.

Fur­ther, No­vo won't dom­i­nate the oral GLP-1 space for long: Ri­val Eli Lil­ly is ex­pect­ed to launch its com­peti­tor pill or­for­glipron in this year's sec­ond quar­ter. Lil­ly has al­ready poured bil­lions in­to its or­for­glipron man­u­fac­tur­ing foot­print, com­mit­ting to build fac­to­ries in Texas and Al­aba­ma.

Ab­b­Vie is su­ing CMS for pick­ing Botox for the third round of Medicare ne­go­ti­a­tions, mak­ing it the first drug­mak­er to chal­lenge the up­com­ing cy­cle in court.

In a law­suit filed Wednes­day in Wash­ing­ton, DC, Ab­b­Vie said plas­ma-de­rived prod­ucts are meant by law to be ex­clud­ed from IRA ne­go­ti­a­tions. The com­pa­ny ar­gued that be­cause its Botox prod­ucts con­tain hu­man serum al­bu­min, which is sourced from donor plas­ma, “CMS has no au­thor­i­ty” to se­lect it.

HHS did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment.

Ab­b­Vie al­so ar­gued due process and free speech vi­o­la­tions, and said the ne­go­ti­a­tion process would amount to a tak­ing of its prop­er­ty with­out just com­pen­sa­tion. The com­pa­ny asked the court to set aside Botox’s se­lec­tion for ne­go­ti­a­tions and block CMS from “ap­ply­ing the drug-pric­ing pro­vi­sions of the IRA to Botox.”

Drug com­pa­nies and in­dus­try groups are push­ing back on the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s pro­pos­als to make it eas­i­er for more pre­scrip­tion drugs to be avail­able over the counter.

While tout­ed by FDA Com­mis­sion­er Mar­ty Makary as a way to low­er drug costs and in­crease ac­cess, in­dus­try — in com­ments sub­mit­ted this month to the agency — is mak­ing clear that the prices of OTC drugs may eclipse gener­ic drug prices, es­pe­cial­ly as in­sur­ance is of­ten not ac­cept­ed for OTC drugs.

“De­spite FDA’s in­tent to de­crease costs and in­crease ac­cess to med­ica­tions, the shift of many pre­scrip­tion drugs to non­pre­scrip­tion sta­tus could ac­tu­al­ly in­crease costs to pa­tients, there­by de­creas­ing pa­tient ac­cess to treat­ments,” the As­so­ci­a­tion for Ac­ces­si­ble Med­i­cines, the gener­ic in­dus­try group, said in a com­ment from Feb. 2.

A bill in­tro­duced in the Sen­ate aims to close a cus­toms “loop­hole” that the phar­ma in­dus­try has had on its radar as a po­ten­tial way to mit­i­gate tar­iffs.

The mea­sure by Sen. Bill Cas­sidy (R-LA) seeks to stop use of a lit­tle-known trade prin­ci­ple called the "first sale rule." That rule al­lows com­pa­nies to re­duce the val­ue of a prod­uct de­clared at US cus­toms, sub­stan­tial­ly low­er­ing the tar­iff du­ty they would have to pay. The bi­par­ti­san bill would en­sure im­porters pay du­ties based on the ac­tu­al com­mer­cial val­ue of the im­port­ed prod­uct, ac­cord­ing to a Wednes­day press re­lease.