Te­va scored a win af­ter a fed­er­al ap­peals court held that its gener­ic Cush­ing’s syn­drome drug doesn’t in­fringe Cor­cept Ther­a­peu­tic­s' patents.

The US Court of Ap­peals for the Fed­er­al Cir­cuit said Thurs­day there was “no clear er­ror” in the low­er court’s rul­ing, which found Cor­cept failed to prove di­rect or in­duced in­fringe­ment.

The patents cov­er meth­ods of ad­min­is­ter­ing Cor­cept’s Ko­r­lym with a CYP3A in­hibitor to treat Cush­ing’s syn­drome. Ko­r­lym was ap­proved in 2012 with a warn­ing la­bel about co-ad­min­is­tra­tion due to safe­ty con­cerns, and the la­bel was re­vised in 2019. Cor­cept sued Te­va af­ter it filed an ap­pli­ca­tion for a gener­ic ver­sion of the drug with a pro­posed la­bel iden­ti­cal to Cor­cept’s.

A fed­er­al judge is al­low­ing Ab­b­Vie and PhRMA to pro­ceed with most of their claims against a Hawaii state law that reg­u­lates how 340B-dis­count­ed drugs are dis­trib­uted.

Thurs­day's de­ci­sion dealt an ear­ly win to Ab­b­Vie and the in­dus­try trade group, which had ar­gued that Hawaii’s state law is pre­empt­ed by the fed­er­al 340B statute. Ab­b­Vie sep­a­rate­ly brought a hand­ful of oth­er claims, in­clud­ing that the law, known as Act 143, is “un­con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly vague.”

US Dis­trict Judge Shan­lyn Park de­nied the state’s re­quests to dis­miss all but one of those chal­lenges, not­ing that “Ab­b­Vie has failed to plau­si­bly al­lege that Act 143 is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly vague.” PhRMA did­n't bring a sim­i­lar claim about the law.

Ab­b­Vie and PhRMA weren't im­me­di­ate­ly avail­able for com­ment.

In a bid to build out its glob­al pres­ence, Hims is buy­ing Aus­tralian dig­i­tal health com­pa­ny Eu­ca­lyp­tus in a deal worth $240 mil­lion up­front.

The deal an­nounced Thurs­day morn­ing would al­low Hims to launch in Aus­tralia and Japan and deep­en its pres­ence in Ger­many, Cana­da and the UK, as the com­pa­ny looks to ex­pand in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Last year, Hims ac­quired Livewell, a Cana­di­an dig­i­tal health plat­form fo­cused on weight loss.

“We've shown the dif­fer­ence that makes in the US, and the log­i­cal next step is work­ing with more in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts to make that dif­fer­ence abroad,” Hims CEO An­drew Dudum said in a news re­lease.

The ac­qui­si­tion is ex­pect­ed to close in the mid­dle of this year. Hims ex­pects to pay $240 mil­lion in cash at clos­ing, and the deal could be worth up to $1.15 bil­lion if cer­tain fi­nan­cial tar­gets are met in the 18 months af­ter clos­ing.

John­son & John­son has paused en­roll­ment in the Phase 2b tri­al of its Alzheimer’s dis­ease can­di­date, and the stock ACIU of its part­ner AC Im­mune closed down about 10% on Wednes­day.

The as­set is an an­ti-pTau ther­a­peu­tic vac­cine known as ACI-35.030, or JNJ-2056. Pa­tient sign-up in the mid-stage study was tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed to al­low J&J to as­sess as­pects of the tri­al, in­clud­ing re­cruit­ment, a Tues­day SEC fil­ing shows. The tri­al it­self con­tin­ues. The pause was not re­lat­ed to new safe­ty find­ings, and the tri­al’s pre­spec­i­fied in­ter­im im­muno­genic­i­ty thresh­old was met, AC Im­mune said.

The study was test­ing the can­di­date in around 500 pa­tients with pre-symp­to­matic Alzheimer’s dis­ease, which means that the study par­tic­i­pants were cog­ni­tive­ly nor­mal but test­ed pos­i­tive for tau.

Pfiz­er’s pur­chase of obe­si­ty biotech Met­sera last year threw the spot­light on long-act­ing weight loss drugs. And the launch of No­vo Nordisk’s We­govy pill in Jan­u­ary did the same for oral drugs. So a long-act­ing pill ought to be just the tick­et — pro­vid­ed there are da­ta that show it works.

This is where the UK biotech Ver­di­va Bio finds it­self. The com­pa­ny emerged in Jan­u­ary 2025 with $411 mil­lion and a plan to de­vel­op a week­ly oral form of a GLP-1 ag­o­nist it had li­censed from Chi­na-based com­pa­ny Sci­wind Bio­sciences.

That as­set, called ec­nog­lu­tide or VRB-101, en­tered Phase 2 late last year. A week­ly pill ap­pears to be a unique ap­proach, CEO Khurem Fa­rooq told End­points News, and in­ter­im da­ta from the tri­al could come in the next few months.