The House is set to vote this week on a bi­par­ti­san bill to keep the gov­ern­ment open be­yond Jan. 30, with new pro­pos­als to change how phar­ma­cy ben­e­fit man­agers op­er­ate and to reau­tho­rize a lapsed FDA vouch­er pro­gram for rare pe­di­atric drugs.

The spend­ing bill, which the Sen­ate is ex­pect­ed to vote on next week, fea­tures PBM re­forms that have been float­ed for years, in­clud­ing re­quire­ments that HHS re­view the fees or oth­er forms of com­pen­sa­tion paid to PBMs or their af­fil­i­ates. The bill would al­so re­quire PBMs to give HHS and in­sur­ers a new an­nu­al re­port that in­cludes drug pric­ing and re­bate da­ta, as well as writ­ten jus­ti­fi­ca­tions in sev­er­al ar­eas — such as for pro­vid­ing more fa­vor­able cov­er­age for a ref­er­ence bi­o­log­ic rather than a biosim­i­lar.

Lead­ing clin­i­cian groups are ask­ing a fed­er­al court to un­do the US over­haul of the child­hood vac­cine sched­ule, call­ing the move the “most egre­gious, reck­less, and dan­ger­ous” ac­tion that HHS Sec­re­tary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his agency have tak­en to date.

The strong lan­guage is part of an up­dat­ed com­plaint the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pe­di­atrics and sev­er­al oth­er or­ga­ni­za­tions filed late Mon­day against the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, which ear­li­er this month down­grad­ed rec­om­men­da­tions for six vac­cines on the sched­ule. The gov­ern­ment al­leged­ly failed to fol­low the “ev­i­den­tiary-dri­ven, and legal­ly re­quired process­es for is­su­ing rec­om­mend­ed vac­cine sched­ules” in the US, the groups said in their law­suit.

An HHS spokesper­son said AAP’s law­suit is “a base­less at­tempt to lit­i­gate for the in­ter­ests of the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s top cor­po­rate donors, which make vir­tu­al­ly every vac­cine across the CDC im­mu­niza­tion sched­ules.”

Val­ne­va has tak­en its chikun­gun­ya vac­cine out of the US mar­ket, with­draw­ing its sus­pend­ed prod­uct and a now-halt­ed post-mar­ket­ing study.

The com­pa­ny said Mon­day that it de­cid­ed to vol­un­tar­i­ly with­draw its bi­o­log­ics li­cense ap­pli­ca­tion and in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al new drug ap­pli­ca­tion for Ix­chiq. The de­ci­sion ef­fec­tive­ly ends the prospect of the vac­cine re­turn­ing to the US mar­ket — at least for now.

Ix­chiq had a tu­mul­tuous 2025 af­ter more than a dozen cas­es of rare neu­ro­log­i­cal and car­diac events, and af­ter two deaths oc­curred in vac­ci­nat­ed old­er adults. Both the CDC and FDA rec­om­mend­ed a pause in the vac­cine’s use in peo­ple 60 years and old­er while the cas­es were in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

About three months lat­er, in ear­ly Au­gust, the FDA lift­ed the pause and added en­hanced warn­ings to the vac­cine’s la­bel. But short­ly af­ter, fol­low­ing Vinay Prasad's re­turn to the agency, the bi­o­log­ics ap­pli­ca­tion was sus­pend­ed.

The Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment has adopt­ed pro­pos­als aimed at re­duc­ing crit­i­cal drug short­ages across the EU, in­clud­ing stricter stock­pil­ing rules and in­cen­tives for com­pa­nies to boost man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty.

On Tues­day, the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment adopt­ed the Crit­i­cal Med­i­cines Act, un­veiled last March, but with new, tougher mea­sures to pre­vent EU drug short­ages. The leg­is­la­tion aims to re­duce the EU’s re­liance on the US, Chi­na and In­dia for drug im­ports and im­prove ac­cess to med­i­cines, Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment mem­ber Tomis­lav Sokol said dur­ing a press brief­ing on Tues­day.

The up­date brings the pro­pos­als one step clos­er to be­com­ing law. The Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment is now ready to be­gin ne­go­ti­a­tions with EU gov­ern­ments to fi­nal­ize the Crit­i­cal Med­i­cines Ac­t's pro­vi­sions, ac­cord­ing to a Tues­day press re­lease.

The bio­phar­ma in­dus­try was hun­gry for an M&A deal dur­ing last week’s JP Mor­gan Health­care Con­fer­ence.

It's fi­nal­ly get­ting one.

GSK is scoop­ing up RAPT Ther­a­peu­tics for $2.2 bil­lion, with a $1.9 bil­lion up­front in­vest­ment, the com­pa­nies said Tues­day.

The move came five days af­ter much of the in­dus­try left the an­nu­al gath­er­ing in San Fran­cis­co, where RAPT is based. It’s al­so the first ac­qui­si­tion un­der new CEO Luke Miels, though the deal was like­ly ham­mered out dur­ing Em­ma Walm­s­ley’s tran­si­tion out of the top post.

GSK made deals at the past two JPM gath­er­ings. It bought can­cer start­up IDRx last year for up to $1.15 bil­lion and snapped up Aio­los Bio for up to $1.4 bil­lion at the be­gin­ning of 2024.