The Pen­ta­gon on Fri­day briefly added WuXi AppTec to a list of com­pa­nies that aid the Chi­nese mil­i­tary be­fore with­draw­ing the fil­ing with no ex­pla­na­tion.

If the list is re­post­ed as is, the des­ig­na­tion would height­en scruti­ny of the biotech sup­pli­er and make it a tar­get of the re­cent­ly passed Biose­cure Act that re­stricts fed­er­al con­tracts with bio­phar­ma sup­pli­ers that are deemed for­eign ad­ver­saries. Biose­cure de­fers to the Pen­tagon's 1260H list of Chi­nese mil­i­tary com­pa­nies.

The ul­ti­mate de­ci­sion may have far-reach­ing con­se­quences. The Shang­hai-based com­pa­ny start­ed out decades ago of­fer­ing on­ly lab ser­vices be­fore ex­pand­ing in­to drug dis­cov­ery, de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing. WuXi con­trols a large share of the con­tract re­search mar­ket and has said it works with the 20 largest phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

Eli Lil­ly is chal­leng­ing a de­ci­sion over how the FDA clas­si­fied its ex­per­i­men­tal, next-gen obe­si­ty shot, in a case that could af­fect the abil­i­ty of com­pounders to ri­val it.

On Thurs­day, Lil­ly filed a no­tice to ap­peal a Sep­tem­ber dis­trict court de­ci­sion that said the FDA didn’t vi­o­late the law when it de­cid­ed to clas­si­fy re­ta­tru­tide as a drug in­stead of a bi­o­log­ic. Lil­ly is bring­ing the case to the US Court of Ap­peals for the Sev­enth Cir­cuit.

How a prod­uct is clas­si­fied de­ter­mines what mar­ket­ing rules it’s sub­ject to, the po­ten­tial length of ex­clu­siv­i­ty and whether the prod­uct can legal­ly be com­pound­ed. An ap­peals court rul­ing could have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the ex­tent to which Lil­ly might face cheap­er, com­pound­ed com­peti­tors once re­ta­tru­tide hits the mar­ket. Bi­o­log­i­cal prod­ucts are not el­i­gi­ble for com­pound­ing, ac­cord­ing to the FDA.

Eli Lil­ly is con­tin­u­ing to stock­pile its obe­si­ty pill or­for­glipron months ahead of its ex­pect­ed US launch.

In a Thurs­day SEC fil­ing, the drug­mak­er said it has $1.5 bil­lion in “pre-launch in­ven­to­ries” as of Dec. 31, “pri­mar­i­ly re­lat­ed” to or­for­glipron.

Last Feb­ru­ary, Lil­ly said it had al­ready stock­piled $548 mil­lion worth of the oral GLP-1 can­di­date, ready to be dis­trib­uted as soon as the drug gains reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval. Or­for­glipron is ex­pect­ed to be ap­proved by the FDA in April.

The In­di­anapo­lis-based com­pa­ny is ready­ing its sup­ply while ri­val No­vo Nordisk has an ear­ly lead in the oral GLP-1 space. No­vo launched its We­govy pill last month, with pre­scrip­tion rates quick­ly ramp­ing up. No­vo said this week that it plans to ex­pand a fac­to­ry in Ire­land to make its drug.

Gilead is buy­ing the glob­al rights to an oral can­cer drug from Gen­house Bio, a Chi­na-based biotech that filed for an IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Ex­change last month.

The Cal­i­for­nia drug­mak­er is dish­ing out $80 mil­lion up­front for GH31, a MAT2A-tar­get­ed syn­thet­ic lethal­i­ty drug for se­lect sol­id tu­mors. MAT2A plays a role in meta­bol­ic reg­u­la­tion and can be over­ex­pressed in can­cer cells.

Gen­house could get up to $1.45 bil­lion in biobucks, the com­pa­ny an­nounced Fri­day on WeChat. A Gilead spokesper­son con­firmed the deal terms to End­points News.

The deal gives Gilead ac­cess to an­oth­er oral can­cer treat­ment, af­ter it inked pacts with Kymera and Re­pare in re­cent months. Much of the biotech's on­col­o­gy fo­cus in re­cent years, though, has been in cell ther­a­py, an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gates and oth­er an­ti­body-based med­i­cines.