The bio­phar­ma in­dus­try is look­ing for cre­ative ways to cush­ion the ef­fect of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s “most fa­vored na­tion” deals on US pric­ing.

Two lawyers who work with bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies told End­points News that they’ve had an uptick in in­quiries on whether amend­ing li­cens­ing con­tracts could be a way to do so.

A typ­i­cal type of li­cens­ing agree­ment is when a drug de­vel­op­er li­cens­es an as­set to a large com­mer­cial part­ner in ter­ri­to­ries where the de­vel­op­er can't ex­e­cute the launch it­self, said Adam Gold­en, an M&A and IP trans­ac­tions lawyer at Fresh­fields. The phar­ma part­ner would roll out the prod­uct and pay roy­al­ties, which can be a per­cent­age of the drug’s sales, and mile­stone pay­ments back to the biotech.

To help with new pi­lot mod­els aimed at low­er­ing drug costs across Med­ic­aid and Medicare, CM­S' in­no­va­tion cen­ter is ramp­ing up staff.

"We are on track to more than dou­ble the size of our team that works on drugs, and we still have open­ings," Abe Sut­ton, di­rec­tor of the Cen­ter for Medicare and Med­ic­aid In­no­va­tion (CM­MI), said Tues­day at the 2026 CMS Qual­i­ty Con­fer­ence in Bal­ti­more. "We're putting thought in­to ar­eas where there's been bar­ri­ers that have slowed down up­take and ac­cess for pa­tients."

Since last No­vem­ber, CM­MI has un­veiled four dif­fer­ent drug pric­ing mod­els as part of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion's "most fa­vored na­tion" push to low­er the cost of med­i­cines. It launched one fo­cused on MFN pric­ing un­der Med­ic­aid, and an­oth­er to broad­en cov­er­age of GLP-1 weight loss drugs. The cen­ter al­so pro­posed two MFN-based pric­ing mod­els for Medicare Parts B and D — known as GLOBE and GUARD.

Aldeyra Ther­a­peu­tics was hop­ing the third time would be the charm for its dry eye drug this St. Patrick­'s Day. No such luck.

The FDA on Tues­day once again re­ject­ed the Boston-area biotech's oph­thal­mol­o­gy drug, re­prox­alap, fol­low­ing a three-month de­lay. The news roiled Aldeyra, with shares ALDX plung­ing 69% as of Tues­day af­ter­noon.

The agen­cy's com­plete re­sponse let­ter cit­ed a "lack of sub­stan­tial ev­i­dence con­sist­ing of ad­e­quate and well-con­trolled in­ves­ti­ga­tions" and nei­ther rec­om­mend­ed run­ning more tri­als nor re­quest­ed more con­fir­ma­to­ry ev­i­dence, Aldeyra said. The lat­est blow comes about four years af­ter CEO Todd Brady had con­fi­dent­ly told in­vestors that re­prox­alap's "ap­prov­abil­i­ty has been put to bed" fol­low­ing clin­i­cal da­ta.