Roche joined a hand­ful of phar­ma com­pa­nies in promis­ing to con­tin­ue its sup­ply of es­sen­tial med­i­cines to Rus­sia — but that promise has come at a cost, CEO Sev­erin Schwan re­vealed.

In an in­ter­view with the Swiss news­pa­per Tages-Anzeiger, Schwan reaf­firmed his com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing life-sav­ing can­cer drugs to Rus­sia, adding that there is an “in­ter­na­tion­al con­sen­sus that med­i­cines are ex­empt from sanc­tions.”

How­ev­er, since the med­i­cines are be­ing paid for in rubles, which have plunged to a record low, the chief ex­ec­u­tive ad­mit­ted that the com­pa­ny is “los­ing mon­ey in Rus­sia at the mo­ment.”

“At Roche, we serve pa­tients not mar­kets,” a spokesper­son said in an emailed state­ment. “There is a good rea­son that life sav­ing and es­sen­tial med­i­cines and cer­tain di­ag­nos­tics so­lu­tions are ex­empt from sanc­tions. As a com­pa­ny we are, and have al­ways been, com­mit­ted to sup­ply­ing our pa­tients with med­i­cines and di­ag­nos­tic tests in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man­i­tar­i­an law.”

The news comes as phar­ma com­pa­nies con­tin­ue to pull out of Rus­sia for a range of busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties. While John­son & John­son com­mit­ted to sup­ply­ing med­i­cines and med­ical de­vices in the re­gion, it has de­cid­ed to sus­pend its sup­ply of per­son­al care prod­ucts in Rus­sia. While the phar­ma gi­ant did not elab­o­rate on which prod­ucts it’s hold­ing back, its con­sumer health unit hous­es com­mon prod­ucts like Lis­ter­ine mouth­wash and Neu­tro­ge­na and Aveeno skin­care prod­ucts.

Be­gin­ning in ear­ly March, J&J will al­so sus­pend all ad­ver­tis­ing, en­roll­ment in clin­i­cal tri­als, and “any ad­di­tion­al in­vest­ment” in Rus­sia.

In that re­gard, the phar­ma gi­ant is in good com­pa­ny — a hand­ful of Big Phar­mas, in­clud­ing Pfiz­er, Glax­o­SmithK­line, Mer­ck, No­var­tis, Bris­tol My­ers Squibb and Roche, have al­so put new site ac­ti­va­tion and new pa­tient en­roll­ment on hold in the coun­try.

Bay­er and Sanofi have al­so made fur­ther ef­forts to pull out of Rus­sia, with Bay­er an­nounc­ing a cou­ple weeks ago that it would stop all spend­ing in Rus­sia and Be­larus not re­lat­ed to sup­ply­ing es­sen­tial prod­ucts in health and agri­cul­ture. Sim­i­lar­ly, Sanofi swore to halt all ad­ver­tis­ing and me­dia ac­tiv­i­ties in Rus­sia, as well as any new spend­ing not re­lat­ed to the sup­ply of “our es­sen­tial med­i­cines and vac­cines.”

“We re­main stead­fast in our sup­port – in­clu­sive of job se­cu­ri­ty, trans­port, lodg­ing and fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance – for our em­ploy­ees and their fam­i­lies in Ukraine,” J&J said in a news re­lease on Tues­day.

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.”