Merry Christmas! This week in our segment on “the same three stories every week that are of broad general interest”, Trump’s administration has made an attempt to reduce U.S. drug prices with a plan to allow Canadian imports; Nancy Pelosi’s hardline drug pricing bill has been passed in the house, but is unlikely to move any further forward; and a recent report has found that the Sackler family continued to withdraw billions from Purdue Pharma after 2008, even as the opioid crisis was understood and growing. Join us in the new year for stories that may or may not be continuations of these!

PURDUE PHARMA PAID $10.4 BILLION TO SACKLER FAMILY DURING OPIOID EPIDEMIC – A report by consultancy AlixPartners has found that since 2008 the embattled Sackler family withdrew $10.4 billion from Purdue Pharma and affiliated businesses, one year after the company was found to have misled patients over OxyContin’s addictiveness. The report has resulted in calls for greater transparency around how much the family benefited from the crisis, and will potentially fuel requests for reparations to those states and cities struggling under the epidemic. 

PELOSI PRICING BILL PASSED IN HOUSE – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s drug price reform bill, which advocates for Medicare negotiations and fines for pharma companies who refuse to negotiate, has passed in the House by a vote of 230-192. It will now pass to the Republican-controlled Senate, who are thought unlikely to pass the bill – with President Trump vowing to veto the bill should it move through. 

U.S. GOVERNMENT PROPOSES DRUG IMPORT PLAN AHEAD OF IMPEACHMENT – Shortly before the vote to impeach President Trump began, his administration proposed a plan allowing imports of medicine from Canada in a bid to reduce skyrocketing U.S. drug prices. The proposal would not cover controlled substances, biologics or intravenous drugs, or those injected into either the spine or the eye. Any applications by states or companies to import medicine would have to be submitted to the FDA specifying what savings would be made. The importer would then be responsible for testing the drugs for authenticity and quality before selling them on in the U.S.

In other news: 

Clinical Trials
PharmaMar and Jazz Pharmaceuticals sign $1 billion deal for lung cancer drug
BMS and Celgene investors file first of “triple threat” drugs worth potentially billions
Merck receives FDA approval for first ever Ebola vaccine

Manufacturing
UCB builds new biotech manufacturing plant in Belgium

That’s all for this week. See you in the new year!

Joshua Neil, Editor
Proventa International