In Ju­ly, word got out that J&J was look­ing to ex­er­cise a loop­hole that would al­low the com­pa­ny to of­fload li­a­bil­i­ties stem­ming from a law­suit con­nect­ed to as­bestos in its ba­by pow­der. A fed­er­al judge has now al­lowed the com­pa­ny to make that move, in a de­ci­sion that could lead the com­pa­ny to split off thou­sands of claims in­to a small­er com­pa­ny that files for bank­rupt­cy.

US bank­rupt­cy judge Lau­rie Sel­ber Sil­ver­stein made the rul­ing Thurs­day in Delaware, Reuters re­port­ed. The com­pa­ny will now be able to use a Texas “di­vi­sive merg­er” law, which al­lows a com­pa­ny to split in­to two en­ti­ties, and has been used by oth­er com­pa­nies that face as­bestos lit­i­ga­tion, Reuters said.

Tens of thou­sands of pa­tients who say that its ba­by pow­der and oth­er talc prod­ucts had as­bestos and caused can­cer have sued J&J. Plain­tiffs in­clude women with ovar­i­an can­cer and oth­ers bat­tling mesothe­lioma.

J&J knew about the as­bestos all along, in­ves­ti­ga­tions have found. From 1972 to 1975, the com­pa­ny failed to tell the FDA that it had found the poi­so­nous sub­stance in its talc. That con­tin­ued all the way through the ear­ly 2000s, a Reuters in­ves­ti­ga­tion found.

There is no safe lev­el of ex­po­sure to as­bestos ac­knowl­edged by the WHO. Even just a small amount of ex­po­sure could trig­ger can­cer years down the line.

In 2018, plain­tiffs in New Jer­sey, Cal­i­for­nia and St. Louis won law­suits against the drug­mak­er, and in the case of St. Louis, the award was near­ly $4.7 bil­lion. But their ju­ries re­ject­ed cas­es as well.

In Ju­ly, J&J said in a state­ment to Reuters that the com­pa­ny had not yet reached a de­ci­sion on whether it will con­tin­ue to split the com­pa­ny up in­to two.

“John­son & John­son Con­sumer Inc. has not de­cid­ed on any par­tic­u­lar course of ac­tion in this lit­i­ga­tion oth­er than to con­tin­ue to de­fend the safe­ty of talc and lit­i­gate these cas­es in the tort sys­tem, as the pend­ing tri­als demon­strate,” the J&J sub­sidiary said to Reuters.

The com­pa­ny didn’t stop sell­ing the tal­cum-based ba­by pow­der un­til May 2020, and did so while deny­ing the al­le­ga­tions that its prod­uct caused can­cer, in­stead at­tribut­ing it to de­clin­ing sales due to “changes in con­sumer habits and fu­eled by mis­in­for­ma­tion around the safe­ty of the prod­uct.”

Despite whispers of a busy year for M&A, deal activity in the pharma space is actually down 30% on a semi-annualized basis, according to PwC’s latest report on deal activity. But don’t rule out larger deals in the second half of the year, the consultants said.

PwC pharmaceutical and life sciences consulting solutions leader Glenn Hunzinger expects to see Big Pharma companies picking up earlier stage companies to try and fill pipeline gaps ahead of a slew of big patent cliffs. Though a bear market continues to maul the biotech sector, Hunzinger said recent deals indicate that pharma companies are still paying above current trading prices.

The story of Amryt Pharma’s candidate for the genetic skin condition epidermolysis bullosa, or EB, will soon enter another chapter.

After the Irish drugmaker’s candidate, dubbed Oleogel-S10 and marketed as Filsuvez, was handed a CRL earlier this year, the company announced in a press release that it plans to submit a formal dispute resolution request for the company’s NDA for Oleogel-S10.

North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis made a name for himself in the 2020 election cycle as the darling of the pharma industry, accepting hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions, even from the likes of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.

Those contributions have led Tillis to attempt to re-write patent laws in pharma’s favor, a move which failed to gain steam in 2019, and request for a third time since January that the FDA should help stop “the false narrative that patent protections are to blame for high drug prices.”