Af­ter Pfiz­er be­came the first drug­mak­er to vol­un­tar­i­ly make pric­ing con­ces­sions to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, CEO Al­bert Bourla had to sell a skep­ti­cal board of in­dus­try peers on what ex­act­ly the ben­e­fit was.

Bourla’s pitch: Low­er­ing drug prices vol­un­tar­i­ly now would keep them from be­ing writ­ten in­to law lat­er, ac­cord­ing to two peo­ple fa­mil­iar with his com­ments. For the oth­er PhRMA board mem­bers at that Oc­to­ber meet­ing who had al­so re­ceived let­ters from Trump de­mand­ing price cuts, the take­away was that com­pro­mise would avoid co­er­cion.

Since then, 15 oth­er com­pa­nies have gone on to make “most fa­vored na­tion” deals. But the tit-for-tat Bourla de­scribed isn’t hap­pen­ing, be­cause this year Trump start­ed push­ing Con­gress to cod­i­fy those agree­ments in­to law. For an in­dus­try so close­ly tapped in­to Wash­ing­ton, its fail­ure to paci­fy the pres­i­dent with con­ces­sions is an un­ex­pect­ed turn, and lead­ers are sig­nal­ing they’re done ne­go­ti­at­ing.

Charles Riv­er Lab­o­ra­to­ries said de­mand for its ser­vices is build­ing back up af­ter near­ly a year of un­cer­tain­ty around tar­iffs and drug pric­ing.

With “tar­iff stuff be­ing sort of over, and what­ev­er pric­ing sit­u­a­tions be­tween Wash­ing­ton and phar­ma com­pa­nies, we think that's sort of passed them. So de­mand seems to be im­prov­ing,” Charles Riv­er CEO Jim Fos­ter said Wednes­day dur­ing the com­pa­ny’s 2025 earn­ings re­sults.

The ser­vice provider al­so named Glenn Cole­man as CFO start­ing on April 6, af­ter Flavia Pease stepped down from the role in Sep­tem­ber. Ker­ry Dai­ley has been ap­point­ed chief le­gal of­fi­cer, a new­ly-cre­at­ed role, and will start on March 30.

Charles Riv­er’s stock CRL was down near­ly 4% on Wednes­day morn­ing.

Sen. Bill Cas­sidy (R-LA), chair­man of the Sen­ate HELP com­mit­tee, un­veiled new pro­pos­als on how the FDA can im­prove the drug ap­proval process, US com­pet­i­tive­ness with Chi­na, use of re­al-world da­ta and clin­i­cal holds for cell and gene ther­a­pies.

Tues­day's re­port comes as Cas­sidy and Rep. Jake Auch­in­closs (D-MA) have called on FDA Com­mis­sion­er Mar­ty Makary to tes­ti­fy be­fore Con­gress on the agen­cy's safe­ty and ef­fi­ca­cy stan­dards, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter vac­cine chief Vinay Prasad over­ruled staff on Mod­er­na's flu vac­cine re­view, which was re­versed on Wednes­day.

"FDA should con­sid­er how to im­prove pre­dictabil­i­ty in the drug re­view process, which should in­clude more ju­di­cious use of clin­i­cal holds and greater trans­paren­cy in its di­a­logue with spon­sors," Cas­sidy's re­port says. "To ac­cel­er­ate rare dis­ease drug de­vel­op­ment, FDA should more con­sis­tent­ly use tools like ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval."

John­son & John­son said it will spend more than $1 bil­lion to build a cell ther­a­py man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in Penn­syl­va­nia as part of its broad­er com­mit­ment un­veiled last year to in­vest more than $55 bil­lion in the US through ear­ly 2029.

A J&J spokesper­son said Wednes­day that con­struc­tion is ex­pect­ed to be­gin lat­er this year, with the site be­com­ing ful­ly op­er­a­tional in 2031. J&J and oth­er large phar­ma com­pa­nies have pledged to spend bil­lions of dol­lars in the US amid Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s on­shoring push.

The new plant will ex­pand J&J’s large foot­print in Penn­syl­va­nia, where it al­ready has 10 fa­cil­i­ties. The project is sup­port­ed by a $41.5 mil­lion state in­vest­ment and is ex­pect­ed to cre­ate more than 500 jobs over the next 12 years, Gov. Josh Shapiro