Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump lost one av­enue to im­pose tar­iffs, but he still has the au­thor­i­ty to place du­ties on phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal im­ports.

Near­ly a year af­ter Trump’s chaot­ic "Lib­er­a­tion Day" tar­iff roll­out, the US Supreme Court ruled on Fri­day that Trump doesn’t have the au­thor­i­ty to im­pose tar­iffs un­der the In­ter­na­tion­al Emer­gency Eco­nom­ic Pow­ers Act (IEEPA). Trump had re­lied on the IEEPA to place broad, rec­i­p­ro­cal tar­iffs on a list of coun­tries in­clud­ing Chi­na (34%) and the EU (15%).

But the rul­ing does­n't im­pact sec­tor-spe­cif­ic tar­iffs un­der Sec­tion 232 of the Trade Ex­pan­sion Act of 1962, such as those for steel and alu­minum. The De­part­ment of Com­merce has been con­sid­er­ing po­ten­tial phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal tar­iffs un­der Sec­tion 232.

Sec­tion 232 “bears lit­tle on the mean­ing of IEEPA,” ac­cord­ing to the Fri­day rul­ing.

Af­ter mount­ing a come­back with fresh cap­i­tal and a flashy part­ner­ship, can­cer test­ing firm Grail once again faces ma­jor ques­tions over the fu­ture of its blood test that screens for dozens of can­cers.

The com­pa­ny's test, called Gal­leri, showed promise but failed over­all to re­duce late-stage can­cers in a close­ly-watched UK study, ac­cord­ing to re­sults an­nounced Thurs­day. In a three-year ran­dom­ized tri­al of 142,000 adults, par­tic­i­pants re­ceived ei­ther an­nu­al mul­ti-can­cer test­ing or stan­dard care alone. The test did not re­duce stage 3-4 can­cers by shift­ing di­ag­no­sis ear­li­er, the pri­ma­ry study goal.

The out­come cloud­ed the com­pa­ny's am­bi­tious ex­pan­sion plans in the US and UK. Grail's stock GRAL trad­ed around $51 on Fri­day, down 50% and re­flect­ing a swift turn­around in in­vestor sen­ti­ment.

Io­n­is Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals has end­ed the de­vel­op­ment of a po­ten­tial med­i­cine for peo­ple with Down syn­drome who are at risk of Alzheimer’s dis­ease, End­points News has learned.

A spokesper­son for the Cal­i­for­nia biotech con­firmed that the com­pa­ny ter­mi­nat­ed a Phase 1b test of the as­set, dubbed ION269, for “mul­ti­ple fac­tors, in­clud­ing slow en­roll­ment.” The de­ci­sion was not re­lat­ed to con­cerns with the drug, and the com­pa­ny does­n't have plans to ad­vance the as­set, the spokesper­son said in a Fri­day email.

The tri­al, co­de­named Hero, en­rolled on­ly one par­tic­i­pant out of an orig­i­nal tar­get of 30. The an­ti­sense oligonu­cleotide aimed to tamp down on pro­duc­tion of a pro­tein key to Alzheimer’s.

→ As Sanofi looks ahead to the Belén Gar­i­jo era, the French phar­ma will al­so have a new head of spe­cial­ty care on March 1. Bri­an Foard will step down on Feb. 28 for “an ex­ter­nal lead­er­ship op­por­tu­ni­ty,” and Manuela Buxo will take his place. Buxo held a va­ri­ety of roles at Bay­er be­fore she joined Sanofi in 2014 as head of glob­al cat­e­gories & in­no­va­tion. She has been glob­al fran­chise head of im­munol­o­gy since Ju­ly 2023, a ther­a­peu­tic area that was a point of em­pha­sis un­der Paul Hud­son. Bill Si­bold ran the spe­cial­ty care busi­ness be­fore he be­came CEO of Rezd­if­fra mak­er Madri­gal Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.