Mar­tin Shkre­li didn’t just blog, read up on drug de­vel­op­ment news and run his biotech busi­ness with a con­tra­band cell phone in prison. Ac­cord­ing to the FTC, he was al­so co­or­di­nat­ing the an­ti­com­pet­i­tive scheme to shield Dara­prim — the drug at the cen­ter of a price-goug­ing con­tro­ver­sy that earned him the “Phar­ma Bro” nick­name — from gener­ic ri­vals.

Back in Jan­u­ary the FTC, to­geth­er with New York’s at­tor­ney gen­er­al, launched a fed­er­al law­suit against Shkre­li, who’s now serv­ing a 7-year sen­tence for de­fraud­ing in­vestors in his hedge fund, al­leg­ing that he ef­fec­tive­ly cre­at­ed a drug mo­nop­oly. While Shkre­li’s no­to­ri­ous move to raise the per tablet price of Dara­prim from $17.50 to $750 was per­fect­ly le­gal, the tac­tics he al­leged­ly de­ployed to box out com­peti­tors weren’t.

“Dur­ing our pre-com­plaint in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the FTC learned that Mr. Shkre­li was com­mu­ni­cat­ing from prison about rel­e­vant mat­ters,” reads a let­ter to Judge Denise Cote.

Specif­i­cal­ly, they found records of his con­ver­sa­tions with ex­ec­u­tives of Vy­era — for­mer­ly Tur­ing and now Phoenixus — in­clud­ing co-de­fen­dant Kevin Mul­leady, which con­tained “in­for­ma­tion rel­e­vant to this case, in­clud­ing about Mr. Shkre­li’s ef­forts from prison to sup­port Vy­era’s scheme to pre­vent gener­ic com­pe­ti­tion to Dara­prim.” There are al­so ma­te­ri­als on his com­mu­ni­ca­tion with at­tor­neys.

The agency wants the court to rule that the com­mu­ni­ca­tions it ob­tained from the Fed­er­al Bu­reau of Pris­ons are not priv­i­leged — and there­fore fair game for the en­su­ing le­gal bat­tle.

Un­like the records on his con­tra­band cell phone, the FTC ar­gues, these calls and emails hap­pened on the prison’s TRU­FONE and TRULINCS sys­tems, which Shkre­li knew could be mon­i­tored and record­ed. Nei­ther at­tor­ney-client priv­i­lege nor the work prod­uct doc­trine should ap­ply here, it writes.

It’s un­clear how much Dara­prim’s pric­ing will be af­fect­ed. A month af­ter the FTC and the New York AG filed their law­suit ask­ing, among oth­er things, to re­store com­pet­i­tive con­di­tions and halt any on­go­ing an­ti-com­pet­i­tive con­duct, the FDA ap­proved the first gener­ic for Dara­prim. Al­though the gener­ic mak­er hasn’t dis­closed how much it’s charg­ing for its copy­cat drug, it was enough to kick Dara­prim off the list of the top 20 most ex­pen­sive treat­ments in the US.

But for Shkre­li and Mul­leady, los­ing the law­suit could mean be­ing barred from the phar­ma in­dus­try in the fu­ture in ad­di­tion to mon­e­tary re­lief.

The prospect could be es­pe­cial­ly tough for Shkre­li, who sought — but was de­nied — a 3-month fur­lough to re­search Covid-19 cures af­ter post­ing a pa­per de­scrib­ing a drug screen and propos­ing RdRp in­hibitors as po­ten­tial treat­ments.

Eli Lilly has succeeded in its attempt to get the first non-covalent version of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase, or BTK, inhibitors to market, pushing it past rival Merck.

The FDA gave an accelerated nod to Lilly’s daily oral med, to be sold as Jaypirca, for patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma.

The agency’s green light, disclosed by the Indianapolis Big Pharma on Friday afternoon, catapults Lilly into a field dominated by covalent BTK inhibitors, which includes AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson’s Imbruvica, AstraZeneca’s Calquence and BeiGene’s Brukinsa.

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) voted unanimously in favor of “harmonizing” Covid vaccine compositions, meaning all current vaccine recipients would receive a bivalent vaccine, regardless of whether they’ve gotten their primary series.

The vote marks an effort to clear up confusion around varying formulations and dosing schedules for current primary series and booster vaccines, as well as “get closer to the strains that are circulating,” according to committee member Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

The CDMO arm of one of South Korea’s largest conglomerates has posted its year-end results and plans for 2023, which include new construction.

Samsung Biologics netted north of KRW 3 trillion ($2.4 billion) in 2022 revenue and an operating profit of KRW 983.6 billion ($799 million), which the company touted on Friday as “record-high earnings.” The revenue boost was 55% compared to 2021.

Novartis’ sickle cell drug, approved in 2019 and branded as Adakveo, has failed an ongoing Phase III, according to preliminary results.

The Swiss pharma giant unveiled early data from the ongoing STAND Phase III study on Friday, saying that crizanlizumab showed no statistically significant difference between the drug at two different dose levels compared to placebo in annualized rates of vaso-occlusive crises that lead to a healthcare visit over the first year since being randomized into the trial.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is calling on senior Federal Trade Commission officials to “closely scrutinize” two proposed pharma mergers.

Warren expressed concern over “rampant consolidation in the pharmaceutical industry,” in particular Amgen’s $28 billion plans to take over Horizon Therapeutics, and Indivior’s proposed acquisition of Opiant for $145 million upfront, in a letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan and Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter earlier this week.