🇨🇳A bipartisan group of Michigan lawmakers released a new bill that could stifle the booming cross-border deals spree between Chinese and American biotechs, Max Bayer wrote on Tuesday. The legislation would require the Treasury secretary to consider significantly more restrictions on outbound US investments in the China biotech industry. 

Large pharmaceutical companies have looked to China to retool their pipelines with massive research and licensing agreements worth billions of dollars. And other VCs and biotechs have licensed drugs from China and run US clinical trials to align with FDA expectations. Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), one of the sponsors behind the new bill, singled out recent deals by Pfizer and Bristol Myers Squibb, suggesting that the government should “subject drug companies’ deals with China to the same scrutiny we apply to investment in China’s tech sector.”

Opponents of protectionist measures argue that limiting what drugs the US can have access to is a detriment to patients. They argue that the only way to reinvigorate the US ecosystem is by making it easier to run quicker, cheaper trials in the US. Max has more details here about how biopharma industry lobbying groups are thinking about deals from China.

🔬We had a team in Chicago last weekend for the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology conference. Here’s a recap of the biggest readouts and trends they tracked:

• Yes, Revolution Medicines' pancreatic cancer data are that good, Lei Lei Wu reported. She spoke with oncologists about the company’s highly anticipated drug daraxonrasib, which is expected to change the face of how pancreatic cancer is treated.
• What’s next for VEGF? Max Gelman dissected some of the ideas discussed at ASCO, including combination approaches that pair VEGF bispecifics with chemotherapy or antibody-drug conjugates. 
• Personalized cancer vaccines might make brain cancers more susceptible to immunotherapy and possibly prolong survival for some patients, according to new research from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Ryan Cross has the full story here.
• Summit and Akeso’s drug ivonescimab reduced the risk of death by 34% in previously untreated Chinese lung cancer patients, compared to standard immunotherapy plus chemotherapy. Max Gelman analyzed the results here. 

🤖The pharma giant gave AI tools to thousands of employees. Now it’s working to get a handle on the costs of the technology and where it’s actually creating productivity and financial returns, Drew Armstrong reported this week from Palo Alto, CA. CEO Chris Boerner said he’s deployed a finance team to assess the company’s spending, noting that "we’re trying to rein some of it in to be sure we’re being thoughtful about investing."

Boerner declined to share any numbers on Bristol Myers’ returns from AI or how much it’s spending. But his comments come as AI providers have reported explosive growth in revenue, much of which is coming from corporate clients. 

Boerner predicted that the majority of savings for large drugmakers will come from clinical development, by finding efficiencies in large, complex trials that take huge amounts of human labor to orchestrate and turn into drug applications. The company is using AI to create regulatory documents, for example, and it has automated much of that process. You can read more about Bristol Myers’ strategy here. 

🤝There were a handful of deals announced this week, including Eli Lilly’s $1.9 billion pact with a pioneer in the growing field of RNA editing. Ascidian Therapeutics’ technology, called exon editing, hijacks the natural process of RNA splicing to replace a large swath of broken genetic code. Ascidian and Lilly will apply the tool to inherited kidney diseases. It’s at least the sixth deal for Lilly in just over a week. In all, Ascidian could earn up to $1.9 billion for the partnership, including an unspecified upfront payment.

A couple days earlier, Servier announced a deal worth $1.55 billion upfront. Servier will pick up the muscular dystrophy business from Edgewise Therapeutics, with a further $1.1 billion in potential payouts on the line if certain regulatory and commercial milestones are met. The French pharma company will gain access to an experimental neuromuscular medicine that could have pivotal data by year’s end. Kyle LaHucik has the details here.

Our team also tracked Alnylam’s first discovery-focused AI deal, Travere’s $112M upfront deal with Everest to grow its rare kidney disease pipeline, and Eli Lilly’s entrance into the GLP-2 space in a deal with Korea's Hanmi. 

⚖️The Supreme Court unanimously sided with Hikma Pharmaceuticals and its “skinny label” version of a prescription-strength fish oil pill in a case that was closely watched by the generics industry. The high court said Amarin failed to prove “that Hikma took any affirmative steps to encourage infringement” of Amarin’s patents when marketing its generic version of the heart drug Vascepa. The opinion likely brings generics manufacturers some comfort, as drug pricing experts had feared that allowing Amarin’s case to proceed would chill new generic launches via skinny labels. You can read more about the case here.