Al­most all of the drug in­dus­try’s biggest ad­ver­tis­ers cut their spend­ing on Twit­ter to ze­ro or near-ze­ro over the last two weeks amid wor­ries about im­per­son­ation of their brands by pranksters and the fu­ture of the so­cial me­dia com­pa­ny.

Among 18 of the biggest phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ad­ver­tis­ers in the US mar­ket, 12 cut their Twit­ter ad spend­ing to noth­ing for the week be­gin­ning Nov. 14, ac­cord­ing to Path­mat­ics, which tracks da­ta on pre­scrip­tion drug ad spend­ing as well as gen­er­al cor­po­rate ad­ver­tis­ing. The list of drug­mak­ers cut­ting spend­ing to ze­ro in­cludes Mer­ck, As­traZeneca, Eli Lil­ly, No­var­tis, Pfiz­er and oth­ers.

Six com­pa­nies showed some spend­ing on Twit­ter ads last week, ac­cord­ing to the da­ta. But for most, the amounts are a few hun­dred or a few thou­sand dol­lars. The sole out­lier is Ger­man drug­mak­er Bay­er, which spent $480,000 last week, a huge jump from the weeks pri­or. Path­mat­ics’ da­ta for Bay­er al­so cap­tures over-the-counter drug ad spend­ing, which could skew the re­sults.

Bay­er said in a state­ment to End­points News: “We con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor de­vel­op­ments at Twit­ter and reg­u­lar­ly as­sess our po­si­tion. We do not re­lease our ad­ver­tis­ing spend.”

While drug com­pa­nies have nev­er been mas­sive ad spenders on Twit­ter, the sud­den change high­lights just how quick­ly some ma­jor brands have pulled back from the so­cial me­dia com­pa­ny in the wake of its takeover by new own­er Elon Musk.

Musk closed his pur­chase of Twit­ter in the fi­nal days of Oc­to­ber, and cor­po­rate brands soon af­ter faced a wave of pranks and im­per­son­ation af­ter Musk launched a pro­gram to sell ver­i­fied badges — pre­vi­ous­ly a mark­er than an ac­count was “of­fi­cial” — to any­one for $8 per month. Eli Lil­ly faced one of the high­est-pro­file such spoofs, from a fake ac­count that sprung up and claimed that the com­pa­ny’s in­sulin was now free.

Eli Lil­ly’s of­fi­cial ac­count @Lil­ly­Pad is still on­line, but with no new tweets since Nov. 10, when the im­poster ac­count spoofed the com­pa­ny. Lil­ly ex­ec­u­tives scram­bled to get the tweet pulled, but it took hours for Twit­ter to re­spond, and Lil­ly’s stock tum­bled by more than 4% by the next day, de­spite gains in the broad­er mar­ket. The $8 ver­i­fied pro­gram was sus­pend­ed soon af­ter.

Lil­ly and oth­er top phar­ma ad­ver­tis­ers all ei­ther de­clined to com­ment or did not re­spond to re­quests for com­ment on their ad­ver­tis­ing spend­ing.

On Nov. 10, the same day of the fake Eli Lil­ly tweet, Musk an­nounced a new pol­i­cy say­ing that par­o­dy ac­counts would on­ly be al­lowed if they iden­ti­fied them­selves in their name. “Ba­si­cal­ly, trick­ing peo­ple is not ok,” he said in a tweet. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for Twit­ter didn’t re­spond to re­quests for com­ment.

The ad pull­back doesn’t mean phar­ma is leav­ing Twit­ter en­tire­ly. Phar­ma cor­po­rate ac­counts are still up, with some con­tin­u­ing to post news and up­dates. For ex­am­ple, Mer­ck post­ed from its ac­count, which now sports the new gray “Of­fi­cial” lo­go, four days ago, an­nounc­ing the Eu­ro­pean ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee’s pos­i­tive opin­ion for its metasta­t­ic prostate can­cer med. Pfiz­er and Bris­tol My­ers Squibb have al­so se­cured gray “of­fi­cial” check­marks, which Twit­ter is us­ing in place of the “ver­i­fied” check­mark badges for some cor­po­rate brands, me­dia out­lets or oth­er ma­jor pub­lic fig­ures.

Lil­ly’s Twit­ter ac­count does not yet have the new gray of­fi­cial ac­count check as of Fri­day morn­ing.

Phar­ma ad­ver­tis­er con­cerns are noth­ing new on Twit­ter. The tra­di­tion­al­ly con­ser­v­a­tive phar­ma in­dus­try has long been wary of the po­ten­tial for ads placed next to con­tro­ver­sial mes­sages and posts.

“It’s fair for phar­ma brands to be more con­ser­v­a­tive and have even more ques­tions now around large scale ad­ver­tis­ing on Twit­ter when there’s more un­cer­tain­ty about how their brand is go­ing to be po­si­tioned,” The Har­ris Poll’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Rob Jekielek said.

On the oth­er side of Twit­ter, the so-called or­gan­ic brand ac­counts and peo­ple in gen­er­al are not go­ing away. As Musk him­self has been point­ing out all week, Twit­ter use is at all-time high. The Har­ris Poll would agree, Jekielek not­ed, as its track­ing of phar­ma and health­care ex­perts and dis­cus­sions on Twit­ter haven’t dropped off at all.

Ed­i­tor’s note: This sto­ry has been up­dat­ed with a state­ment from Bay­er.

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.

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.”