At­tempts by the White House to cur­ry in­dus­try sup­port for leg­is­la­tion that would cod­i­fy last year’s vol­un­tary drug pric­ing deals are be­ing ig­nored by some drug­mak­ers who be­lieve there’s lit­tle to ne­go­ti­ate.

Two sources fa­mil­iar with the White House’s en­gage­ment with in­dus­try said that a num­ber of com­pa­nies have de­clined in­vi­ta­tions to re­view draft leg­isla­tive text. It was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear which com­pa­nies have de­clined, af­ter at least four com­pa­nies met with ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials ear­li­er this month.

The re­fusals to meet sug­gest a con­cert­ed flip in the re­la­tion­ship be­tween drug­mak­ers and the ad­min­is­tra­tion. Mul­ti­ple large drug­mak­ers told End­points News on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty that they weren’t sup­port­ive of the ef­fort and have held off from en­gag­ing with the ad­min­is­tra­tion. One told End­points that pre­vi­ous threats by CMS Ad­min­is­tra­tor Mehmet Oz that cod­i­fy­ing the deals would avoid po­ten­tial­ly harsh­er leg­is­la­tion down the line from a dif­fer­ent ad­min­is­tra­tion have been met with skep­ti­cism.

Mer­ck’s drug en­lic­i­tide beat a hand­ful of com­mon­ly used cho­les­terol-low­er­ing drugs in a com­para­tor tri­al, inch­ing it clos­er to be­com­ing the first oral PC­SK9 in­hibitor.

The com­pa­ny an­nounced back in June that en­lic­i­tide achieved greater re­duc­tions in LDL-C, oth­er­wise known as “bad cho­les­terol,” com­pared to a hand­ful of oth­er non-statin op­tions: Es­pe­ri­on’s Nexle­tol and Nexl­izet and Organon’s Ze­tia. On Mon­day, Mer­ck out­lined the depth of that re­sponse.

En­lic­i­tide re­duced LDL-C by 56.7% com­pared to Nexle­tol and by 28.1% ver­sus Nexl­izet in the Phase 3 tri­al. Com­pared to Ze­tia, which is al­so sold as a gener­ic called eze­tim­ibe, en­lic­i­tide low­ered LDL-C by 36%. Pa­tients in the tri­al, dubbed CORAL­reef Ad­dOn, had high cho­les­terol, and had a his­to­ry, or were at risk of, ath­er­o­scle­rot­ic car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease.

Two decades ago, when I was a ba­by-faced Capi­tol Hill re­porter, Texas Re­pub­li­can Michael Burgess was a rel­a­tive­ly new mem­ber of Con­gress, swept in with the post-Clin­ton wave of Bush con­ser­v­a­tives.

Burgess, a physi­cian, was one of sev­er­al doc­tors in Con­gress and quick­ly be­came a voice for Re­pub­li­can health pol­i­cy. Since leav­ing in 2025, he’s watched the MA­HA takeover of health and vac­cine pol­i­cy. And he’s been speak­ing out about ma­ter­nal and in­fant health, vac­cine-pre­ventable dis­eases, autism and oth­er is­sues — and warn­ing that Re­pub­li­cans are run­ning a po­lit­i­cal risk by not stick­ing up for sci­ence and pol­i­cy they once be­lieved in.

Near­ly all of In­cheon-head­quar­tered Sam­sung Bi­o­log­ic­s' union mem­bers have sup­port­ed plans to strike over wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, af­ter an in­ter­nal em­ploy­ee da­ta leak in No­vem­ber.

The Sam­sung Bi­o­log­ics La­bor Union said Mon­day that 95.52% of its mem­bers vot­ed in fa­vor of the strikes. The union group rep­re­sents about 75% of Sam­sung Bio’s rough­ly 5,000-per­son work­force. The la­bor ac­tion would be­gin in May un­less work­ers reach an agree­ment with the CD­MO be­fore then, ac­cord­ing to the union.

The work­er­s' con­cerns fol­low an in­ter­nal da­ta breach in No­vem­ber that caused per­son­al em­ploy­ee da­ta, in­clud­ing salaries and per­for­mance as­sess­ments, to be ac­ces­si­ble to any Sam­sung Bio work­er, ac­cord­ing to a re­port from Busi­ness Ko­rea. 

Dur­ing this year's Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Der­ma­tol­ogy an­nu­al meet­ing in Den­ver, com­pa­nies like Sanofi, Bio­gen and Tan­abe Phar­ma pre­sent­ed da­ta for their re­spec­tive can­di­dates. But there were oth­er phar­ma com­pa­nies that stood out with re­sults from their pre­vi­ous­ly toplined tri­als:

📊 Take­da’s Phase 3 plaque pso­ri­a­sis da­ta: Zasoc­i­tinib, which Take­da ac­quired for $4 bil­lion in its 2022 deal with Nim­bus Ther­a­peu­tics, ap­pears more ef­fi­ca­cious than Bris­tol My­ers Squibb’s sim­i­lar drug So­tyk­tu (cross-tri­al caveats notwith­stand­ing). In its two Phase 3 stud­ies, zasoc­i­tinib saw 76% and 71% of pa­tients, re­spec­tive­ly, achieve skin clear­ance of at least 75% af­ter 16 weeks. In the two stud­ies So­tyk­tu used for its plaque pso­ri­a­sis ap­proval, the Bris­tol My­ers drug helped 58.3% and 53% of pa­tients reach the same lev­el of skin clear­ance. Both zasoc­i­tinib and So­tyk­tu are oral, once-a-day TYK2 in­hibitors. Take­da pre­vi­ous­ly toplined the Phase 3 da­ta in De­cem­ber and says it’s on track to file for FDA ap­proval by March 31, 2027.