De­spite serv­ing his stint be­hind bars, the Mar­tin Shkre­li saga con­tin­ues to sprout legs with new law­suits pop­ping up. Now, in an­tic­i­pa­tion of be­ing a free man once again, Shkre­li is push­ing back on a fed­er­al ban that would seek to keep him out of a pub­lic com­pa­ny’s board­room for the rest of his life.

Shkre­li’s lawyers hope to re­scind the for­mer Retrophin CEO’s life­time ban from the SEC on serv­ing as a di­rec­tor or of­fi­cer of a pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny, ar­gu­ing that oth­er dis­graced ex­ec­u­tives have re­ceived much more le­nient 10-year bans, ac­cord­ing to a brief filed in a NY court­room.

The lawyers point­ed to Shkre­li’s sta­tus as a first-time of­fend­er to make the case he like­ly wouldn’t re­peat the white-col­lar mis­con­duct that placed him in prison  and ar­gued that his age — 38 — means a life­time ban “would have a far greater puni­tive im­pact on him than on a sim­i­lar­ly sit­u­at­ed, but old­er, de­fen­dant.”

In ar­gu­ing his case, Shkre­li’s team point­ed the ex­am­ple of for­mer Ther­a­nos head Eliz­a­beth Holmes, who earned a 10-year ban from the SEC de­spite fac­ing fraud charges in fed­er­al court. Holmes, lawyers ar­gued, en­gaged in crimes “a hun­dred times the size of the fraud” Shkre­li com­mit­ted and earned a more le­nient ban. An­oth­er case they point­ed to was Schultz Chan, a for­mer Ake­bia bio­sta­tis­tics di­rec­tor who com­mit­ted in­sid­er trad­ing and was on­ly shut out of serv­ing at a pub­lic com­pa­ny for five years.

Shkre­li’s team al­so ar­gued that he shouldn’t be on the hook for a $1.4 mil­lion fine from the SEC giv­en his on­go­ing sen­tence and the mil­lions he’s al­ready lost in civ­il fine and for­fei­tures.

The idea of Shkre­li, the “phar­ma bro” who de­fraud­ed Retrophin’s in­vestors, get­ting back to busi­ness should be enough to make the biotech in­dus­try’s blood run cold. But even in the mid­dle of his prison sen­tence, Shkre­li’s prob­lems are on­ly start­ing.

In March, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Min­neso­ta sued Shkre­li and Vy­era Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals — for­mer­ly Tur­ing — over plans to uti­lize what are known as “re­sale re­stric­tions,” pre­vent­ing pro­duc­ers of po­ten­tial Dara­prim gener­ics from ob­tain­ing the nec­es­sary sam­ples of the drug need­ed for FDA eval­u­a­tion. Dara­prim, you’ll re­mem­ber, was the tox­o­plas­mo­sis drug for which Shkre­li jacked up the price and sparked na­tion­al out­rage.

Shkre­li, Vy­era and the oth­er de­fen­dants named — the Swiss biotech Phoenixus and its CEO Kevin Mul­leady — al­so al­leged­ly tried to buy up all the sup­ply of Dara­prim’s ac­tive in­gre­di­ent pyrimethamine, and re­fused ac­cess to the Dara­prim sales da­ta need­ed to de­ter­mine whether a gener­ic prod­uct would be com­mer­cial­ly vi­able.

Over the past three years, Endpoints News has spotlighted 60 women who have blazed trails and supercharged R&D across the biopharma world. And judging from the response we’ve received, to both our special reports and live events, telling their stories — including any obstacles they may have had to overcome — has inspired our readers in many different ways.

But change takes time, and the fact remains that women are still underrepresented at the upper ranks of the drug-making world.

Pfizer is launching its second-ever rebate program, this time for Panzyga, its treatment for a rare neurological disease of the peripheral nerves.

The program began last month, according to STAT which first reported the news, and offers a refund of out-of-pocket costs for patients who must discontinue their course before the fifth treatment for “clinical reasons.”

Panzyga was approved back in 2018 to treat primary immunodeficiency (PI) in patients two years and older and chronic immune thrombocytopenia (cITP) in adults. It has since picked up an indication in chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), a condition that’s characterized by weakness of the arms or legs, tingling or numbness, and a loss of deep tendon reflexes, according to the NIH.