Biotechs with sin­gle prod­ucts in the mar­ket are like­ly on edge about how Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s phar­ma tar­iffs and “most fa­vored na­tion” pric­ing will play out, Rhythm Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals CEO David Meek­er told End­points News in an in­ter­view.

The Boston-based rare dis­ease biotech mar­kets Im­civree for weight man­age­ment in pa­tients with cer­tain rare ge­net­ic dis­or­ders. Meek­er said sim­i­lar com­pa­nies with one com­mer­cial prod­uct may al­so have con­cerns that if they launched their drugs over­seas first, that typ­i­cal­ly low­er price would al­so be­come the list price in the US un­der po­ten­tial MFN pric­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Trump an­nounced 100% phar­ma levies this month, but on­ly some phar­ma com­pa­nies are like­ly to shoul­der those tar­iffs in full. MFN pric­ing deals be­tween drug­mak­ers and the White House ex­empt com­pa­nies from phar­ma tar­iffs. Prod­ucts like or­phan drugs, gener­ics, biosim­i­lars and "spe­cial­i­ty" prod­ucts will be ex­empt from tar­iffs but no de­tails if rare dis­ease drugs will be ex­empt have been com­mu­ni­cat­ed.

Re­gen­eron is set to work on ra­dio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals for the first time in a new part­ner­ship to de­vel­op sol­id tu­mor ther­a­pies as well as di­ag­nos­tic agents with Telix Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

Un­der the 50/50 col­lab­o­ra­tion, Re­gen­eron will of­fer its back­ground in bi­o­log­ics, es­pe­cial­ly bis­pe­cif­ic an­ti­bod­ies, and Telix will bring its man­u­fac­tur­ing and sup­ply chain ex­pe­ri­ence. Telix will re­ceive $40 mil­lion up­front so Re­gen­eron can ac­cess its man­u­fac­tur­ing plat­form to de­vel­op four ra­dio­phar­ma as­sets that could ex­pand to four more pro­grams with a fresh batch of up­front pay­ments.

The Mon­day an­nounce­ment is a land­mark deal for Telix, which could po­ten­tial­ly re­ceive up to $2.1 bil­lion in com­mer­cial and de­vel­op­ment mile­stone pay­ments, plus low dou­ble-dig­it roy­al­ties, for those first four as­sets. The Aus­tralia-head­quar­tered ra­dio­phar­ma com­pa­ny's re­cent slate of deals has fo­cused on ac­qui­si­tions, in­clud­ing RLS Ra­dio­phar­ma­cies and clin­i­cal as­sets from Imag­inAb.

The price dif­fer­en­tial be­tween the US and oth­er coun­tries "will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly nar­row­er or small­er" go­ing for­ward be­cause of pres­sure from the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion's "most fa­vored na­tion" deals, Bay­er's chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer for its phar­ma di­vi­sion said, adding to sim­i­lar com­ments by oth­er phar­ma ex­ec­u­tives.

Se­bas­t­ian Guth, who al­so serves as the head of Bay­er's US phar­ma unit, spoke to End­points News dur­ing an in­ter­view this week in New York.

Bay­er was one of a few large, glob­al drug de­vel­op­ers that was­n't brought in­to the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion's first round of pric­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions. Since an­nounc­ing most of those deals last year, how­ev­er, the White House has been work­ing to bring in more com­pa­nies, and al­so to turn the pric­ing agree­ments in­to law — an idea much of the in­dus­try op­pos­es.

The FDA threw its sup­port be­hind a dozen pep­tides, an­nounc­ing plans to re­clas­si­fy them, like­ly pre­sent­ing a huge mon­ey-mak­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty for what’s been a large­ly opaque mar­ket to date.

The agency said in a doc­u­ment post­ed Wednes­day that it plans to re­move the prod­ucts from Cat­e­go­ry 2, de­fined as a bulk drug sub­stance that rais­es sig­nif­i­cant safe­ty con­cerns. The de­ci­sion was an­nounced by HHS Sec­re­tary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a post on X, who wrote that “this ac­tion be­gins to re­store reg­u­lat­ed ac­cess and will im­me­di­ate­ly be­gin shift­ing de­mand away from the black mar­ket.”

It is not clear where the prod­ucts will be re­clas­si­fied, though there is on­ly one cat­e­go­ry that's more le­nient: Cat­e­go­ry 1. Bulk drug sub­stances in that cat­e­go­ry are ef­fec­tive­ly al­lowed to be mass pro­duced by com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies, be­cause the FDA has said it doesn’t in­tend to take ac­tions against phar­ma­cies that do so, con­tin­gent on them fol­low­ing oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry mea­sures.

The start of 2026 has shaped up as an ex­ten­sion of the sol­id per­for­mance we tracked with Deal­For­ma’s Chris Doko­ma­ji­lar through the sec­ond half of last year. Deal­mak­ing con­tin­ued apace, ven­ture cap­i­tal is re­cov­er­ing, and Asia stayed out front as the lead­ing re­gion for li­cens­ing pacts.

Chi­nese biotechs, which seized the spot­light on deals last year, start­ed out 2026 hot­ter than ever. Phar­ma com­pa­nies ea­ger to ex­pand their pipelines have tak­en ad­van­tage of Chi­na's drug labs, which have been quick to fol­low R&D trends.

VCs, mean­while, re­grouped around lat­er-stage as­sets, chas­ing the wind­fall re­turns that shape R&D in many re­spects.

Plus, news about Grand Riv­er, sy­ringe stock­pil­ing in South Ko­rea and Cel­lares:

💉 MSF crit­i­cizes Gilead’s lenaca­pavir sup­ply: Gilead is ex­pand­ing sup­ply of the HIV pre­ven­tion in­jec­tion to an ad­di­tion­al one mil­lion peo­ple, bring­ing the to­tal to three mil­lion. The move is due to in­vest­ment from the US Pres­i­dent’s Emer­gency Plan for AIDS Re­lief (PEP­FAR) and the Glob­al Fund. But Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders (al­so known as Médecins Sans Fron­tières, or MSF) said this sup­ply is “not near­ly enough” to meet de­mand.

🧐 PolyPep­tide un­der­goes strate­gic re­view: The pep­tide CD­MO’s board of di­rec­tors and its ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er Draup­nir Hold­ing are in the ear­ly stages of a strate­gic re­view, the com­pa­ny said on Tues­day. The an­nounce­ment comes af­ter a Fri­day Bloomberg