Fol­low­ing in As­traZeneca’s car­bon-re­duced foot­steps, No­var­tis an­nounced new sus­tain­abil­i­ty tar­gets on Tues­day, which in­clude plans to neu­tral­ize sup­ply chain emis­sions in the next 10 years.

The Swiss phar­ma aims to be car­bon-neu­tral in its own op­er­a­tions by 2025, and across its sup­ply chain by 2030. To get there, it says it will re­duce ab­solute emis­sions by 35% across its val­ue chain, and fol­low a “dual strat­e­gy” to de­crease en­er­gy and fu­el con­sump­tion, im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy and adopt re­new­able en­er­gy sources. It au­dit­ed all ma­jor sites for po­ten­tial im­prove­ments.

“We have a long­stand­ing, com­pre­hen­sive en­er­gy and cli­mate pro­gram, which aims to im­prove en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy for all in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions and use re­new­able en­er­gy sources where avail­able and fea­si­ble,” the com­pa­ny stat­ed.

No­var­tis tout­ed what it’s al­ready do­ing to pre­serve the en­vi­ron­ment, in­clud­ing se­ques­ter­ing car­bon through forestry projects in Colom­bia, Mali, Chi­na and Ar­genti­na. It plant­ed 800 hectares of trees at the San­to Domin­go Es­tate in Ar­genti­na in 2007, then added 2,250 hectares in the fol­low­ing three years. By 2040, the com­pa­ny ex­pects to col­lect up to 2 mil­lion tons of car­bon diox­ide equiv­a­lents through the project. It al­so boast­ed of its Texas wind farm, and says it has sim­i­lar plans to achieve green en­er­gy in Eu­rope.

“Af­ter the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of a re­new­able pow­er pur­chase agree­ment in the US that achieved car­bon neu­tral­i­ty in that mar­ket for pro­cured elec­tric­i­ty we are now ac­tive­ly pur­su­ing a pan-Eu­ro­pean pow­er pur­chase agree­ment that will achieve the same, de­car­boniz­ing our pur­chased elec­tric­i­ty in one of our largest re­gions of op­er­a­tions and elim­i­nat­ing tran­si­tion risk as­so­ci­at­ed with car­bon pric­ing,” No­var­tis’ CDP cli­mate change in­for­ma­tion re­quest states.

The an­nounce­ment comes about 7 months af­ter UK-based As­traZeneca com­mit­ted to achiev­ing neg­a­tive car­bon emis­sions across its val­ue chain by 2030. The com­pa­ny will in­vest up to $1 bil­lion in its “Am­bi­tion Ze­ro Car­bon” strat­e­gy, which in­cludes us­ing re­new­able en­er­gy for pow­er and heat, and switch­ing to a 100% elec­tric ve­hi­cle fleet five years ahead of sched­ule.

“Cli­mate change is an ur­gent threat to pub­lic health, the en­vi­ron­ment and the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the glob­al econ­o­my. Since 2015, we have re­duced our car­bon emis­sions from op­er­a­tions by al­most a third and our wa­ter con­sump­tion by al­most one fifth,” As­traZeneca CEO Pas­cal So­ri­ot said in a state­ment.

The top career staff at the FDA have vowed not to let politics get in the way of science when looking at vaccine data this fall. But Alex Azar, who happens to be their boss’s boss, apparently won’t even give them a chance to stand in the way.

In a new memorandum issued Tuesday last week, the HHS chief stripped health agencies under his purview — including the FDA — of their rulemaking ability, asserting all such power “is reserved to the Secretary.” Sheila Kaplan of the New York Times first obtained and reported the details of the September 15 bulletin.

J&J’s one-two punch on EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer has turned up some promising — although decidedly early — results, fueling the idea that there’s yet room to one up on third-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors.

Twenty out of 20 advanced NSCLC patients had a response after taking a combination of an in-house TKI dubbed lazertinib and amivantamab, a bispecific antibody targeting both EGFR and cMET engineered on partner Genmab’s platform, J&J reported at ESMO. All were treatment-naïve, and none has seen their cancer progress at a median follow-up of seven months.

Late in August, as negotiations on a pricing deal with President Trump reached a boiling point, PhRMA president Stephen Ubl sent an email update to the 34 biopharma chiefs that sit on his board. He wrote that if the industry did not agree to pay for a $100 “cash card” sent to seniors before November, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was going to tell the news media Big Pharma was refusing to “share the savings” with the elderly — and that all of the blame for failed drug pricing negotiations would lie squarely on the industry.

When AstraZeneca trumpeted “momentous” and “transformative” results for Tagrisso earlier this year at ASCO, some practitioners threw cold water on the ADAURA fervor. Sure, the disease-free survival data look good, but overall survival is the endpoint that matters when it comes to choosing adjuvant therapy for non-small cell lung cancer patients, the experts said.

The OS data still aren’t here, but AstraZeneca is back at ESMO to bolster their case with a look at brain metastasis data.