The FDA is again look­ing in­to the safe­ty of the abor­tion drug mifepri­s­tone fol­low­ing a Louisiana court or­der and calls from Re­pub­li­can law­mak­ers to in­ves­ti­gate the drug.

In an up­date post­ed on Wednes­day, the agency said its near­ly one-year-long study will help de­ter­mine whether to change the Risk Eval­u­a­tion and Mit­i­ga­tion Strat­e­gy, or REMS, for the drug, which cur­rent­ly al­lows women to ob­tain it with­out an in-per­son doc­tor vis­it.

The FDA in 2021 said that it would con­tin­ue the pan­dem­ic-era prac­tice of al­low­ing the drug to be dis­pensed via tele­health providers. The FDA had found no dif­fer­ences in ad­verse events when the drug was de­liv­ered in-per­son or vir­tu­al­ly.

Ab­b­Vie filed suit against the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment on Wednes­day over its in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the word “pa­tient” un­der the 340B fed­er­al drug dis­count pro­gram.

The law­suit is the lat­est twist in the phar­ma in­dus­try’s fight to rein in 340B, which has rapid­ly ex­pand­ed in re­cent years. When the pro­gram start­ed in 1992, about 1,000 health cen­ters were par­tic­i­pat­ing, Ab­b­Vie wrote in its law­suit. By 2021, there were more than 50,000. Ab­b­Vie al­leged that the gov­ern­ment’s “over­ly broad in­ter­pre­ta­tion” of which pa­tients may re­ceive dis­count­ed drugs “fa­cil­i­tates wide­spread 340B pro­gram abuse.”

If the com­pa­ny wins, it could bring in­to ques­tion how drug dis­counts are ad­min­is­tered more broad­ly.

“Should Ab­b­Vie have its way, there will be a lot of con­fu­sion,” said An­drew Twina­mat­siko, di­rec­tor of the O’Neill In­sti­tute’s Cen­ter for Health Pol­i­cy and the Law at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty. “Be­cause there won't be a sin­gle de­f­i­n­i­tion of what a pa­tient means.”

Deals deals deals.

Bio­phar­ma M&A is hav­ing one of its best stretch­es in years, as big phar­ma buy­ers snap up small­er biotechs. We'll be talk­ing live about what's go­ing on and how this time seems dif­fer­ent from pri­or signs of life in the merg­er mar­ket.

Tune in on YouTube Fri­day at 1:15 p.m. ET. I'll be joined by our deals and fi­nanc­ing ex­pert Kyle LaHu­cik as we in­ter­view Emi­ly Field, head of US bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals eq­ui­ty re­search at Bar­clays.

We'll talk about why big com­pa­nies are buy­ing now, what type of as­sets they're go­ing af­ter, what counts as a "big" deal these days and what all the cash com­ing back to in­vestors means for the start­up mar­ket.

While an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gates have had their mo­ment in the sun for the past few years, a de­grad­er twist on the hot can­cer modal­i­ty is gath­er­ing steam.

Roche is fur­ther delv­ing in­to its decade-long part­ner­ship with C4 Ther­a­peu­tics in a new col­lab­o­ra­tion that seeks to cre­ate de­grad­er-an­ti­body con­ju­gates, or DACs, for treat­ing can­cers. The ex­pand­ed tie-up, dis­closed Thurs­day morn­ing, in­cludes $20 mil­lion up­front and the po­ten­tial for about $1 bil­lion if var­i­ous mile­stones are hit across dis­cov­ery, de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial stages.

DACs have at­tract­ed a few large drug­mak­ers, in­clud­ing one this week. Al­though the bulk of Gilead­'s $3.15 bil­lion at­ten­tion on Tubu­lis ear­li­er this week was like­ly geared to­ward the Ger­man star­tup's two clin­i­cal-stage AD­Cs, a pre­clin­i­cal DAC could rise to the fore in the com­ing years. Bris­tol My­ers Squibb is al­so in the game, and pro­tein de­grad­er leg­end Craig Crews is cook­ing up his next start­up.