As the may­or of New York City, Mike Bloomberg had a few mod­est ideas about low­er­ing pre­scrip­tion drug prices in the Big Ap­ple that gained lit­tle trac­tion. Now on the cam­paign trail on a faint hope of clinch­ing the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, the bil­lion­aire has some big­ger plans — in­clud­ing one that would al­ter the patent sys­tem cen­tral to the bio­phar­ma busi­ness.

In a bare­bones drug pric­ing plan post­ed on Mon­day, Bloomberg came out blast­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump for fail­ing to de­liv­er his promise to low­er drug prices, and then mak­ing mis­lead­ing claims about them. The price of over 3,000 drugs still in­creased at a rate five times high­er than in­fla­tion in the first six months of 2019, he wrote.

So how will he fix it? Bloomberg lists a few wide­ly dis­cussed pol­i­cy pro­pos­als, in­clud­ing au­tho­riz­ing Medicare to ne­go­ti­ate drug prices (a key goal of Nan­cy Pelosi’s re­cent­ly passed House bill), al­low­ing Amer­i­cans to buy med­i­cine from oth­er coun­tries (some­thing the HHS has re­leased a plan on), and cap­ping out-of-pock­et costs for Medicare ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

He al­so pledged to elim­i­nate “pay­offs” — pre­sum­ably the arrange­ment com­mon­ly known as re­bates — from drug­mak­ers to phar­ma­cy ben­e­fit man­agers. The White House had set out to do the same but changed course to kill re­bate re­form back in Ju­ly.

But Bloomberg’s most eye-catch­ing pro­pos­al is this: “Bring gener­ic drugs to the mar­ket faster by lim­it­ing brand-name drug mak­ers to one patent that lasts 20 years.”

Ac­cel­er­at­ing the speed of gener­ics ap­proval had been a key goal for for­mer FDA Com­mis­sion­er Scott Got­tlieb, who called out brand­ed drug­mak­ers for “shenani­gans” to de­lay gener­ic drug com­pe­ti­tion. Dur­ing his tenure, Got­tlieb al­so im­ple­ment­ed new poli­cies aimed at bar­ring phar­ma from ex­ploit­ing REMS re­quire­ments for their ben­e­fit.

But chang­ing patent and IP laws could be a dras­tic ex­pan­sion of that ef­fort. Ab­b­Vie has re­port­ed­ly se­cured more than 100 patents to pro­tect Hu­mi­ra, the best-sell­ing drug on the plan­et and a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar fran­chise.

While the 20-year term is in line with cur­rent lim­its, Bloomberg al­so didn’t spec­i­fy if his so­lu­tion would al­low for patent ex­ten­sions (max­i­mum 5 years) un­der the Hatch-Wax­man Act.

The oth­er part of Bloomberg’s re­form would have drug com­pa­nies pay roy­al­ties to the NIH if they use NIH IP and turn it in­to a com­mer­cial prod­uct — which can be con­tro­ver­sial as il­lus­trat­ed in Gilead’s re­cent dis­putes with the HHS over HIV patents. Bloomberg stopped short of spelling out the con­se­quences for any phar­ma play­ers who don’t com­ply with his poli­cies. Sen­a­tors Eliz­a­beth War­ren and Bernie Sanders — who are polling ahead of Bloomberg — have both sug­gest­ed that they would seize or break drug patents over what they view as egre­gious pric­ing.

After being struck by a rare disease as a healthy third year medical student, David Fajgenbaum began an arduous journey chasing his own cure. Amidst the hustle of this year’s JP Morgan conference, the digital trials platform Medable partnered with Endpoints Studio to share Dr. Fajgenbaum’s story with the drug development industry.

What follows is an edited transcript of the conversation between Medable CEO Dr. Michelle Longmire and Dr. Fajgenbaum, and it is full of lessons for biotech executives charged with bringing the next generation of medicines to patients.

For two months, as the novel coronavirus swelled from a few early cases tied to a Wuhan market to a global epidemic, most of the world’s focus and dollars have flowed toward emergency initiatives: building vaccines at a record pace, plucking experimental antivirals out of freezers to see what sticks and immunizing mice for new antibodies.

Now a new and well-funded collaboration between Harvard and a top Chinese research institute will play the long game. In a 5-year, $115 million initiative backed by China Evergrande Group, researchers from the Harvard Medical School, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Guangzhou Institute for Respiratory Health will study the virus in an effort to develop therapies against infections by the novel coronavirus, known as SARS–CoV-2, and to prevent new ones.

In the first step of what’s likely to be a long and uphill battle for the drugmaker, the FDA has accepted Novartis’s BLA submission for a new multiple sclerosis drug and given it priority review. The PDUFA date for the potential blockbuster drug is in June.

The drug, known as ofatumumab or Arzerra, has performed consistently well across late-stage trials in patients with the most common form of MS, including in head-to-head studies against Sanofi’s old blockbuster Aubagio. But, if the drug is approved, Novartis will find itself in a crosstown game of catch-up; since a 2017 approval, Roche’s Ocrevus has become the second best-selling MS drug on the market, nearly eclipsing Biogen’s Tecfidera last quarter with over a $1 billion in sales.

American patients who suffer from conditions other than Covid-19 could feel the impact of the coronavirus due to shortage of drugs — as 150 prescription drugs are now reportedly on a list of at-risk therapies. The list spans “antibiotics, generics and some branded drugs without alternatives,” Axios reported citing sources familiar with the list. The FDA declined to comment.

Although factories in China are gradually reopening, restrictions in travel and disruptions at transit hubs are still slowing down production. An Indian company that relies on active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) from China told Bloomberg last week that it’s seeing prices of commonly used drugs jump by 40% to 70%.

Zoetis forked over $85 million in 2017 to acquire Nexvet Biopharma and its pipeline of monoclonal antibodies. Juergen Horn, Nexvet’s former chief product development officer, has now secured $15 million for his own biologic company for animals: Invetx.

Buoyed by emerging advances in gene therapies for humans, scientists have started looking at harnessing the technology for animals setting up companies such as Penn-partnered Scout Bio and George Church-founded Rejuvenate Bio. But akin to Nexvet, Invetx is working on leveraging the time-tested science of monoclonal antibodies to treat chronic diseases that afflict man’s best friend.

As the coronavirus originating out of Wuhan spreads to South Korea, Italy and Iran, stoking already intense fears of a pandemic, GlaxoSmithKline has found another pair of trusted hands to place its adjuvant system. China’s Clover Biopharmaceuticals will add the adjuvant to its preclinical, protein-based vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2.

Clover, which is based in the inland city of Chengdu, boasts of a platform dubbed Trimer-Tag that produces covalently-trimerized fusion proteins. Its candidate, COVID-19 S-Trimer, resembles the viral spike (S)-protein found in the virus.