Viking Ther­a­peu­tics has con­tract­ed CD­MO Cor­den­Phar­ma for a to­tal of $150 mil­lion to make bil­lions of clin­i­cal and com­mer­cial dos­es of its GLP-1/GIP re­cep­tor ag­o­nist for weight loss.

The Swiss CD­MO will man­u­fac­ture the API and fin­ished drug prod­uct of VK2735 in both the in­jectable and oral dosage forms, ac­cord­ing to a Tues­day re­lease. The CD­MO has com­mit­ted to make 100 mil­lion au­toin­jec­tors and 100 mil­lion vials and sy­ringes for the in­jectable form, as well as one bil­lion oral tablets. Viking will pay in in­stall­ments over the next three years.

Cor­den­Phar­ma has been mak­ing moves to boost ca­pac­i­ty, in­vest­ing an­oth­er €100 mil­lion in­to its €900 mil­lion growth plan. That project will ex­pand two fac­to­ries in Col­orado and build a third on the same site. It will al­so con­struct a fac­to­ry in Basel, Switzer­land.

Can Gilead be held ac­count­able for hold­ing back the sale of an HIV drug it al­leged­ly knew was safer than its block­buster pre­de­ces­sor?

That's the ques­tion be­fore the Cal­i­for­nia Supreme Court, and the an­swer could of­fer a unique ex­am­ple of a sit­u­a­tion where a phar­ma com­pa­ny can be li­able for a prod­uct that isn’t de­fec­tive.

Two aca­d­e­mics from the Uni­ver­si­ty of West Vir­ginia and Dart­mouth wrote in a JA­MA View­point on Wednes­day that there's a strong case to be made against Gilead be­cause it knew that the lat­er prod­uct was safer and de­lib­er­ate­ly de­layed the launch of that drug.

Mallinck­rodt Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and En­do are in talks over a po­ten­tial merg­er worth about $7 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to a re­port from Bloomberg News.

The out­let re­port­ed that the two spe­cial­ty phar­mas are dis­cussing a pro­pos­al that would give each rough­ly 50% con­trol of the com­bined com­pa­ny. The pair could agree to a deal as soon as this week, ac­cord­ing to the re­port, which cit­ed sources with knowl­edge of the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for En­do and Mallinck­rodt did­n't im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to re­quests for com­ment on the sto­ry.

En­do has al­ready been on the deal­mak­ing cir­cuit, sell­ing its in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness to Cana­da-based Knight Ther­a­peu­tics ear­li­er this week for $84 mil­lion up­front, with an­oth­er $15 mil­lion in po­ten­tial mile­stones. That deal is ex­pect­ed to close by the mid­dle of the year.

Dave Wel­don and Mehmet Oz, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s nom­i­nees to lead the CDC and CMS, are set for their con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings this week and are ex­pect­ed to face ques­tions on vac­cines, staffing cuts and more.

The de­bunked link be­tween vac­cines and autism will like­ly be a fo­cal point dur­ing Wel­don’s hear­ing on Thurs­day, as the for­mer con­gress­man has been sym­pa­thet­ic to con­cerns about vac­cines and autism in the past. The is­sue came up sev­er­al times dur­ing the con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings for HHS Sec­re­tary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as well as for Trump’s NIH and FDA nom­i­nees.

Un­lock­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty will be key for Leg­end Biotech and John­son and John­son in achiev­ing their goal of reach­ing “block­buster sta­tus” for Carvyk­