New York pros­e­cu­tors sued the for­mer CEO of Emer­gent BioSo­lu­tions over al­leged in­sid­er trad­ing while the con­tract man­u­fac­tur­er strug­gled with con­t­a­m­i­na­tion is­sues mak­ing As­traZeneca's Covid-19 vac­cine dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

The law­suit, filed Thurs­day by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Leti­tia James, claims Robert Kramer had ma­te­r­i­al non-pub­lic knowl­edge and sold more than $10 mil­lion in stock pri­or to the com­pa­ny's prob­lems com­ing to light in Feb­ru­ary 2021. The AG is seek­ing dam­ages, dis­gorge­ment and costs from Kramer. James al­so an­nounced a set­tle­ment with Emer­gent for ap­prov­ing the ex­ec­u­tive's trades.

The dis­pute hinges on the tim­ing of a stock trad­ing pro­gram Kramer put in place and what he knew about con­t­a­m­i­na­tion is­sues at the Mary­land fa­cil­i­ty where Emer­gent helped make As­traZeneca's Covid vac­cine.

One of the main ques­tions for drug­mak­ers en­ter­ing 2026, and one they hope tilts in their fa­vor, is whether the US will suc­cess­ful­ly pres­sure Eu­rope to raise the price it pays for drugs.

Three weeks in­to the year, the an­swer de­pends on who you ask.

At the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum in Davos this week, Pfiz­er CEO Al­bert Bourla said in a CN­BC in­ter­view that the com­pa­ny was still ne­go­ti­at­ing its Eu­ro­pean prices.

“The US price go­ing down is hap­pen­ing now, the US price go­ing up in Eu­rope, we will see,” he said Tues­day. Bourla added that the rea­son Eu­ro­pean talks are in flux is be­cause the com­pa­ny doesn’t have an agree­ment with the bloc, de­scrib­ing it as a “cum­ber­some process.”

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.

SAN FRAN­CIS­CO — Through­out his 53 meet­ings at this year's JP­Mor­gan Health­care Con­fer­ence, Richard Saynor mulled a char­i­ta­ble idea about the top­ic on every­one's minds.

"We're go­ing to put a cup in the mid­dle of the ta­ble," the San­doz CEO said. "Every time you men­tion GLP-1, I'm go­ing to charge you $5. I'm go­ing to do­nate it to, I don't know, an in­jured Cana­di­an seals fund or some­thing like that."

As San­doz pre­pares to launch what could be the world's first gener­ic ver­sion of No­vo Nordisk's Ozem­pic, or semaglu­tide, in Cana­da and pos­si­bly Brazil in 2026, there are end­less ques­tions on how that mar­ket plays out. Saynor, the long­time in­dus­try vet­er­an who has led San­doz since 2019, has few pre­dic­tions for how this all un­folds.

All but 17 drug­mak­ers avoid­ed a di­rect de­mand from Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump last year to low­er their prices sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

But that like­ly won’t last.

There was a sub­tle un­ease among ex­ec­u­tives of some of the largest phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies at the JP Mor­gan Health­care Con­fer­ence this week, par­tic­u­lar­ly those that have so far dodged tough ne­go­ti­a­tions with the White House over "most fa­vored na­tion" drug pric­ing. And be­fore the con­fer­ence con­clud­ed on Thurs­day, Trump asked Con­gress to cod­i­fy his MFN deals in­to law.

"The fact of the mat­ter is it's ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult for you to get in­to the de­tails of what's be­ing dis­cussed and what's be­ing agreed on," Ot­suka's North Amer­i­ca pres­i­dent Tarek Rabah said in an in­ter­view this week. "That makes it a lit­tle bit more chal­leng­ing."

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump wants new leg­is­la­tion that ce­ments his "most fa­vored na­tion" deals with drug­mak­ers, ask­ing Con­gress to put the drug price dis­counts in­to law that the phar­ma in­dus­try has so far vol­un­tar­i­ly agreed to.

In a video state­ment re­leased Thurs­day, Trump called for a broad set of health­care re­forms that in­clude cod­i­fy­ing MFN pric­ing. He said he want­ed Con­gress to “com­plete the work that we’ve start­ed” and re­it­er­at­ed that he wants Amer­i­cans to pay the low­est drug prices in the world.

It’s not clear what ex­act­ly would be cod­i­fied, giv­en that the pre­cise terms of the deals struck with 16 large phar­mas have not been pub­licly re­leased. The com­pa­nies that have signed deals with the White House so far have agreed to pro­vide sup­ple­men­tal re­bates to Med­ic­aid through a vol­un­tary pi­lot pro­gram and sell se­lect med­i­cines at a dis­count di­rect­ly to cash-pay­ing pa­tients. They've al­so agreed to launch new prod­ucts at MFN prices.