The Pen­ta­gon on Fri­day briefly added WuXi AppTec to a list of com­pa­nies that aid the Chi­nese mil­i­tary be­fore with­draw­ing the fil­ing with no ex­pla­na­tion.

If the list is re­post­ed as is, the des­ig­na­tion would height­en scruti­ny of the biotech sup­pli­er and make it a tar­get of the re­cent­ly passed Biose­cure Act that re­stricts fed­er­al con­tracts with bio­phar­ma sup­pli­ers that are deemed for­eign ad­ver­saries. Biose­cure de­fers to the Pen­tagon's 1260H list of Chi­nese mil­i­tary com­pa­nies.

The ul­ti­mate de­ci­sion may have far-reach­ing con­se­quences. The Shang­hai-based com­pa­ny start­ed out decades ago of­fer­ing on­ly lab ser­vices be­fore ex­pand­ing in­to drug dis­cov­ery, de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing. WuXi AppTec con­trols a large share of the con­tract re­search mar­ket and has said it works with the 20 largest phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

Eli Lil­ly is con­tin­u­ing to stock­pile its obe­si­ty pill or­for­glipron months ahead of its ex­pect­ed US launch.

In a Thurs­day SEC fil­ing, the drug­mak­er said it has $1.5 bil­lion in “pre-launch in­ven­to­ries” as of Dec. 31, “pri­mar­i­ly re­lat­ed” to or­for­glipron.

Last Feb­ru­ary, Lil­ly said it had al­ready stock­piled $548 mil­lion worth of the oral GLP-1 can­di­date, ready to be dis­trib­uted as soon as the drug gains reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval. Or­for­glipron is ex­pect­ed to be ap­proved by the FDA in April.

The In­di­anapo­lis-based com­pa­ny is ready­ing its sup­ply while ri­val No­vo Nordisk has an ear­ly lead in the oral GLP-1 space. No­vo launched its We­govy pill last month, with pre­scrip­tion rates quick­ly ramp­ing up. No­vo said this week that it plans to ex­pand a fac­to­ry in Ire­land to make its drug.

Ul­tragenyx an­nounced Thurs­day af­ter­noon that the FDA would not take up its re­cent gene ther­a­py ap­pli­ca­tion. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it will lay off about 10% of its em­ploy­ees as part of a re­struc­tur­ing, fol­low­ing a bumpy 2025.

Ul­tragenyx re­ceived an “in­com­plete re­sponse let­ter” on Thurs­day, say­ing US reg­u­la­tors want­ed “ad­di­tion­al sup­port­ive doc­u­men­ta­tion” re­gard­ing re­spons­es to its pre­vi­ous re­jec­tion for the gene ther­a­py, known as UX111, last year. Ul­tragenyx’s treat­ment is de­signed for pa­tients with San­fil­ip­po syn­drome type A.

Dur­ing the com­pa­ny’s fourth-quar­ter earn­ings call, CEO Emil Kakkis said the agency typ­i­cal­ly re­ceives this in­for­ma­tion “dur­ing an in­spec­tion, and we were pre­pared to do so, but we will now pro­vide this sup­port­ive doc­u­men­ta­tion as a part of our BLA re­sub­mis­sion.”

John­son & John­son said it will spend more than $1 bil­lion to build a cell ther­a­py man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in Penn­syl­va­nia as part of its broad­er com­mit­ment un­veiled last year to in­vest more than $55 bil­lion in the US through ear­ly 2029.

A J&J spokesper­son said Wednes­day that con­struc­tion is ex­pect­ed to be­gin lat­er this year, with the site be­com­ing ful­ly op­er­a­tional in 2031. J&J and oth­er large phar­ma com­pa­nies have pledged to spend bil­lions of dol­lars in the US amid Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s on­shoring push.

The new plant will ex­pand J&J’s large foot­print in Penn­syl­va­nia, where it al­ready has 10 fa­cil­i­ties. The project is sup­port­ed by a $41.5 mil­lion state in­vest­ment and is ex­pect­ed to cre­ate more than 500 jobs over the next 12 years, Gov. Josh Shapiro said Wednes­day.

Charles Riv­er Lab­o­ra­to­ries said de­mand for its ser­vices is build­ing back up af­ter near­ly a year of un­cer­tain­ty around tar­iffs and drug pric­ing.

With “tar­iff stuff be­ing sort of over, and what­ev­er pric­ing sit­u­a­tions be­tween Wash­ing­ton and phar­ma com­pa­nies, we think that's sort of passed them. So de­mand seems to be im­prov­ing,” Charles Riv­er CEO Jim Fos­ter said Wednes­day dur­ing the com­pa­ny’s 2025 earn­ings re­sults.

The ser­vice provider al­so named Glenn Cole­man as CFO start­ing on April 6, af­ter Flavia Pease stepped down from the role in Sep­tem­ber. Ker­ry Dai­ley has been ap­point­ed chief le­gal of­fi­cer, a new­ly-cre­at­ed role, and will start on March 30.

Charles Riv­er’s stock CRL was down near­ly 4% on Wednes­day morn­ing.

Eli Lil­ly is chal­leng­ing a de­ci­sion over how the FDA clas­si­fied its ex­per­i­men­tal, next-gen obe­si­ty shot, in a case that could af­fect the abil­i­ty of com­pounders to ri­val it.

On Thurs­day, Lil­ly filed a no­tice to ap­peal a Sep­tem­ber dis­trict court de­ci­sion that said the FDA didn’t vi­o­late the law when it de­cid­ed to clas­si­fy re­ta­tru­tide as a drug in­stead of a bi­o­log­ic. Lil­ly is bring­ing the case to the US Court of Ap­peals for the Sev­enth Cir­cuit.