New FDA Com­mis­sion­er Mar­ty Makary took to the stage at the reg­u­la­tor's Mary­land head­quar­ters on Wednes­day, in his first pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion to much of the agency since Tues­day's mass fir­ings.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the fir­ings, which were tar­get­ed at 3,500 FDA em­ploy­ees — or 19% of staff — he called the changes dif­fi­cult but nec­es­sary to reach the goal of "Mak­ing Amer­i­ca Healthy Again," re­fer­ring to the slo­gan of new HHS Sec­re­tary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Sim­i­lar job cuts by Kennedy took place Tues­day across gov­ern­ment health func­tions.

Makary's re­marks were de­scribed by three peo­ple who at­tend­ed the ses­sion. Makary took no ques­tions, two of the peo­ple said, but ac­knowl­edged the dif­fi­cult na­ture of the past sev­er­al days, and said he would sup­port staff who were vi­tal to the agen­cy's op­er­a­tions.

This week’s sweep­ing lay­offs at the FDA have caused some bio­phar­ma lead­ers to change their tune on the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Af­ter Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s vic­to­ry in No­vem­ber, many bio­phar­ma CEOs ranged from cau­tious op­ti­mism to en­thu­si­asm about more deals, ris­ing mar­kets and few­er reg­u­la­tions. But the first few months have been de­fined by in­dus­try lead­ers who ei­ther stayed silent or tried to find com­mon ground, even as long­time vac­cine skep­tic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was con­firmed to lead HHS, and the Elon Musk-led DOGE ini­tia­tive draft­ed mass work­force re­duc­tion plans in­side of HHS.

Tues­day’s fed­er­al cuts, which gut­ted di­vi­sions of the FDA and forced out many se­nior lead­ers with decades of in­sti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge, prompt­ed the be­gin­nings of crit­i­cism from some of bio­phar­ma’s Trump back­ers.

The FTC’s le­gal fight against three ma­jor phar­ma­cy ben­e­fit man­agers is on hold af­ter two agency com­mis­sion­ers have been re­moved by the Trump Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The com­mis­sion­ers, Re­bec­ca Slaugh­ter and Al­varo Bedoya, is­sued two of three votes in fa­vor of bring­ing an ad­min­is­tra­tive com­plaint against the PBMs last year, which al­leged that “an­ti­com­pet­i­tive and un­fair re­bat­ing prac­tices” by the com­pa­nies led to in­flat­ed list prices for in­sulin prod­ucts. Care­mark, Ex­press Scripts, Op­tum Rx and af­fil­i­at­ed com­pa­nies known as group pur­chas­ing or­ga­ni­za­tions were named in the com­plaint.

Slaugh­ter and Bedoya were ter­mi­nat­ed by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion on March 18, ac­cord­ing to a mo­tion filed on Mon­day. As “there are cur­rent­ly no sit­ting Com­mis­sion­ers able to par­tic­i­pate in this mat­ter,” the case has been stayed for at least 105 days, a Tues­day or­der states. The stay can be lift­ed “up­on mo­tion by one or more of the par­ties in the pro­ceed­ing."

Eli Lil­ly’s di­rect-to-con­sumer ser­vice has added an­oth­er tele­health start­up to its line-up of providers who can pre­scribe its med­ica­tions, as it pre­pares to see more de­mand for obe­si­ty drugs fol­low­ing the end of the tirzepatide short­age.

The drug­mak­er has list­ed Boston-based known­well, a pri­ma­ry care and obe­si­ty med­i­cine start­up, on the Lil­ly­Di­rect site, along­side two ex­ist­ing weight loss part­ners, Form Health and 9amHealth. Ac­cord­ing to the site, known­well will pro­vide vir­tu­al care na­tion­wide.

Lil­ly has been ex­pand­ing Lil­ly­Di­rect, which launched in Jan­u­ary 2024 to con­nect pa­tients to providers treat­ing obe­si­ty, mi­graines and di­a­betes and ship pre­scrip­tions straight to pa­tients’ homes. In re­cent months, Lil­ly al­lowed vir­tu­al care com­pa­nies in­clud­ing Ro, Sesame and Noom to in­te­grate their tech­nol­o­gy with its plat­form so pa­tients could more seam­less­ly ac­cess cash-on­ly vials of Zep­bound, the brand name for the obe­si­ty drug tirzepatide. Last week, the drug­mak­er al­so part­nered with Synap­ti­c­ure to con­nect pa­tients to Alzheimer’s treat­ment.

Plus, news about Sum­it­o­mo Phar­ma, Gilead, Roche, De­sen­tum, In­hi