In a first, Chi­na has fea­tured in­sulin in its cen­tral­ized drug pro­cure­ment pro­gram — but the bulk or­der comes at a siz­able cost for multi­na­tion­al phar­ma play­ers.

No­vo Nordisk, Sanofi and Eli Lil­ly were among eight com­pa­nies, do­mes­tic and for­eign, whose in­sulin prod­ucts won ten­ders from the Chi­nese pub­lic hos­pi­tal sys­tem. In ex­change, the drugs’ prices were cut, on av­er­age, by 48%, sav­ing the med­ical in­sti­tu­tions a col­lec­tive $1.4 bil­lion on the first batch of 210 mil­lion dos­es, ac­cord­ing to state me­dia.

As a re­sult of the ten­der process, some do­mes­tic drug­mak­ers scored big­ger or­ders be­cause they of­fered low­er prices than their (pre­vi­ous­ly dom­i­nant) for­eign coun­ter­parts.

Ac­cord­ing to lo­cal re­ports, the prices got as low as $2.81 (RMB17.89) per vial.

Giv­en cen­tral­ized price ne­go­ti­a­tion in re­im­burse­ment and pro­cure­ment in Chi­na, com­pet­ing on dis­counts — and how far they can go — has be­come im­per­a­tive for the phar­ma in­dus­try. But where drug­mak­ers con­cede on price, they typ­i­cal­ly ex­pect to make up with vol­ume.

Over the week­end, No­vo Nordisk not­ed a com­bi­na­tion of low­er prices and re­duced vol­umes could have a neg­a­tive im­pact on sales, slow­ing growth down by about 3%. An­a­lysts ex­pect it to catch up with next-gen­er­a­tion di­a­betes drugs such as its GLP-1 ag­o­nists.

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.

Following the Supreme Court’s historic decision on Friday to overturn Americans’ constitutional right to an abortion after almost 50 years, Attorney General Merrick Garland sought to somewhat reassure women that states will not be able to ban the prescription drug sometimes used for abortions.

Following the decision, the New England Journal of Medicine also published an editorial strongly condemning the reversal, saying it “serves American families poorly, putting their health, safety, finances, and futures at risk.”

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.”