As­traZeneca, No­vo Nordisk, and Sanofi won an ap­peals court win on Mon­day, as the US Court of Ap­peals for the Third Cir­cuit found that the com­pa­nies can­not be forced to pro­vide 340B-dis­count­ed drugs pur­chased by hos­pi­tals from an un­lim­it­ed num­ber of com­mu­ni­ty and spe­cial­ty phar­ma­cies.

“Le­gal du­ties do not spring from si­lence,” the de­ci­sion says as the court makes clear that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the “sup­posed re­quire­ment” that the 340B pro­gram com­pels drug­mak­ers to sup­ply their dis­count­ed drugs to an un­lim­it­ed num­ber of con­tract phar­ma­cies is not cor­rect, not­ing:

Drug mak­ers of­ten com­ply by lim­it­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion to a few phar­ma­cies that are spe­cial­ly trained to ed­u­cate and mon­i­tor pa­tients. The gov­ern­ment now says that such lim­its are il­le­gal un­der Sec­tion 340B. Per­haps there is a cost­ly, com­plex way to com­ply with both re­quire­ments, but this ten­sion is an­oth­er strike against the gov­ern­ment’s read­ing.

Un­der Sec­tion 340B, drug mak­ers that take part in Medicare or Med­ic­aid must of­fer their drugs at a steep dis­count for cer­tain low-in­come pa­tients. But in re­cent years hos­pi­tals have added an in­creas­ing num­ber of phar­ma­cies re­quir­ing 340B prices, forc­ing the mar­ket to bal­loon to 15% of US phar­ma sales in 2021, ac­cord­ing to IQVIA.

Hos­pi­tal as­so­ci­a­tion 340B Health Pres­i­dent and CEO Mau­reen Testoni said in an emailed state­ment: “We re­spect­ful­ly dis­agree with the Third Cir­cuit’s de­ci­sion that drug com­pa­nies are not re­quired to of­fer 340B dis­counts through all com­mu­ni­ty and spe­cial­ty phar­ma­cy part­ners… We await de­ci­sions from the oth­er two ap­peals courts on this cru­cial is­sue, and we urge the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion to con­tin­ue a strong de­fense of its in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the 340B law.”

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.

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.

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.”