Al­most a year af­ter Am­gen told in­vestors that the IRS want­ed bil­lions of dol­lars in back tax­es, a De­troit pen­sion fund is tak­ing on Am­gen in fed­er­al court — propos­ing a class ac­tion ju­ry tri­al against the phar­ma gi­ant.

In the 42-page com­plaint (case 1:23-cv-02138-ER) filed in fed­er­al dis­trict court in Man­hat­tan on Mon­day, Roofers Lo­cal No. 149 Pen­sion Fund sued Am­gen, CEO Robert Brad­way and CFO Pe­ter Grif­fith, ac­cus­ing the com­pa­ny of hid­ing its tax in­for­ma­tion from in­vestors and de­lay­ing re­port­ing of the claimed back tax­es — ef­fec­tive­ly mak­ing “false and mis­lead­ing state­ments,” ac­cord­ing to the fil­ing.

The fund al­so claimed that Am­gen’s share price fell 6.5% on Aug. 4, 2021, and 4.3% on April 28, 2022 af­ter mul­ti­ple no­tices came out that im­pli­cat­ed how much Am­gen owed per what the US gov­ern­ment claimed, “ul­ti­mate­ly caus­ing in­vestors to suf­fer hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in loss­es when the truth was be­lat­ed­ly re­vealed,” ac­cord­ing to the fil­ing.

The is­sue first came to light in Au­gust 2021, af­ter Am­gen re­port­ed it re­ceived a no­tice from the IRS that it was look­ing at Am­gen’s prof­it al­lo­ca­tion be­tween the US and Puer­to Ri­co from 2010-2015, and that it owed $3.6 bil­lion. Last year, the com­pa­ny dis­closed that the amount had grown to north of $7 bil­lion.

Some of Am­gen’s main man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties are lo­cat­ed in Puer­to Ri­co.

An Am­gen spokesper­son told End­points News that the com­pa­ny be­lieves the al­le­ga­tions “are with­out mer­it” and that it “will vig­or­ous­ly de­fend our po­si­tion in court.”

The spokesper­son al­so high­light­ed a note sent to in­vestors by in­vestor re­la­tions VP Arvind Sood, sent at an un­dat­ed time, that even fur­ther broke down Am­gen’s ra­tio­nale on how much is sub­se­quent­ly owed out of the orig­i­nal $10.7 bil­lion bal­ance.

Per the VP’s note, of the $10.7 bil­lion, $2 bil­lion is “whol­ly un­war­rant­ed,” and an­oth­er $2 bil­lion re­sults from IRS er­rors in “ac­count­ing for cer­tain in­come and ex­pens­es.” On top of that, Am­gen says that any pay­ment would go down by $4.2 bil­lion — $1.1 bil­lion from a pre­vi­ous de­posit and the oth­er $3.1 bil­lion in repa­tri­a­tion tax from the 2017 tax re­form law that passed back un­der the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“Thus, in our view the IRS pro­posed ad­just­ments and penal­ties are over­stat­ed by sev­er­al bil­lions,” the note added.

Am­gen has been looked at be­fore for its low tax rate. Sen­ate Fi­nance Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) reached out to Am­gen late last year ask­ing for “vol­un­tary com­pli­ance” to pro­vide fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion on how it end­ed up pay­ing a low­er tax rate than the stan­dard 21% US cor­po­rate tax rate.

Ed­i­tor’s note: Ar­ti­cle up­dat­ed to note that Am­gen first dis­closed that it owed $3.6 bil­lion to the IRS in Au­gust 2021.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

Thermo Fisher Scientific is putting down more roots in the Bay Area.

The manufacturer opened the doors to a new cell therapy manufacturing facility next to the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center’s Mission Bay campus and on the university’s campus.

UCSF and Thermo Fisher have had a partnership since 2021, with the new site focusing on manufacturing cell therapeutics for certain cancers, including glioblastoma and multiple myeloma. The new site plans to use Thermo Fisher’s expertise in manufacturing services to help UCSF accelerate the development of cell therapies and eventually get them into the clinic, said Dan Herring, the general manager of cell therapy services at Thermo Fisher, in an interview with Endpoints News.

Catalent will be manufacturing a low-cost version of the opioid overdose treatment naloxone as part of a contract with Harm Reduction Therapeutics.

Catalent plans to manufacture the treatment at its facility in Morrisville, NC. No financial details on the deal were disclosed.

Harm Reduction was granted priority review status for the NDA on its spray last year. The company has been working on a naloxone product since 2017. It is anticipating approval in July of this year and a US launch in early 2024.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”

Last year, South African-based vaccine manufacturer Aspen Pharmacare was facing reports that it had not received a single order for its manufactured Covid-19 shots and that manufacturing lines were sitting idle. But now the vaccine producer is looking to turn things around.

Aspen’s disclosure of its financial results in March unveiled that manufacturing revenue had decreased by 12% to R 603 million ($33.8 million), which Lorraine Hill, Aspen Group’s COO, said is attributable to lower Covid vaccine sales.