A close con­fi­dant and aide of FDA Com­mis­sion­er Mar­ty Makary won't be forced to re­sign af­ter run­ning afoul of the White House, but al­so won't be pro­mot­ed in­to a se­nior role at the reg­u­la­tor.

Makary had planned to ap­point San­ju­la Jain-Nag­pal, who had been serv­ing as his di­rec­tor of pol­i­cy and re­search strat­e­gy, as his deputy chief of staff. Jain-Nag­pal used the new ti­tle dur­ing a Nov. 12 call with agency stake­hold­ers. But the White House had nev­er signed off, ac­cord­ing to a White House of­fi­cial, who spoke with End­points News Fri­day on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

That led to a per­cep­tion that she was be­ing in­sub­or­di­nate, and the White House asked for her res­ig­na­tion. It pulled back that de­mand, the of­fi­cial said, but it al­so de­nied Jain-Nag­pal's pro­mo­tion.

As­traZeneca will in­vest $2 bil­lion to ex­pand its pres­ence in Mary­land, its lat­est move to boost US man­u­fac­tur­ing as part of a larg­er $50 bil­lion pledge, the com­pa­ny an­nounced Fri­day.

The UK-based drug­mak­er will use the funds to on­shore its rare dis­ease port­fo­lio to the US for the first time. It plans to ex­pand its bi­o­log­ics fa­cil­i­ty in Fred­er­ick, MD, and near­ly dou­ble the fac­to­ry’s com­mer­cial ca­pac­i­ty.

As­traZeneca will al­so build a new fac­to­ry in Gaithers­burg, MD, which will man­u­fac­ture as­sets for clin­i­cal tri­als, the UK drug­mak­er said. Around 300 new jobs will be cre­at­ed across both the Gaithers­burg and Fred­er­ick sites.

The phar­ma gi­ant an­nounced its larg­er $50 bil­lion pledge in Ju­ly as part of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s on­shoring push.

Te­va’s chal­lenge against Medicare ne­go­ti­a­tions fell flat in DC fed­er­al court, mark­ing an­oth­er loss for the phar­ma in­dus­try.

US Dis­trict Judge Sparkle Sook­nanan said Thurs­day that Te­va’s con­sti­tu­tion­al and statu­to­ry claims against the ne­go­ti­a­tion process “ei­ther fail on the mer­its or are un­ripe.”

Te­va has al­ready filed a no­tice of ap­peal, and a com­pa­ny spokesper­son said it “stands be­hind the mer­its” of the case.

Its chal­lenge will be one of two ap­peals cas­es left un­de­cid­ed in the phar­ma in­dus­try’s long-run­ning le­gal bat­tle against the In­fla­tion Re­duc­tion Act. A de­ci­sion could come any day for in­dus­try trade group PhRMA in the Fifth Cir­cuit. Mean­while, Mer­ck is still wait­ing on a de­ci­sion in DC dis­trict court, and As­traZeneca pe­ti­tioned its case to the US Supreme Court in Sep­tem­ber.

Build­ing on the grow­ing suc­cess of of­fer­ing cheap­er cash-pay prices to con­sumers for their GLP-1 weight loss drugs, No­vo Nordisk and Eli Lil­ly are set­ting up pro­grams to work di­rect­ly with em­ploy­ers.

Waltz Health, an Ever­sana com­pa­ny that brings pay­ors and phar­ma di­rect­ly to­geth­er, is work­ing with Lil­ly and No­vo to pow­er the ap­proach. Through Waltz, there will be a fixed price for the med­ica­tions, though the com­pa­nies haven’t shared what that price will be.

On­ly about 20% of em­ploy­ers with more than 200 em­ploy­ees in 2025 of­fer cov­er­age for GLP-1s for weight loss. Rather than cov­er­ing the med­ica­tions through the tra­di­tion­al phar­ma­cy ben­e­fit man­ag­er for­mu­la­ry, em­ploy­ers have been con­sid­er­ing al­ter­na­tive mod­els. That way, the em­ploy­er could of­fer some obe­si­ty med­i­cine ben­e­fits. Many Amer­i­cans get health ben­e­fits through their em­ploy­er.