Pas­cal So­ri­ot has spent more than 20 years at the top of an in­dus­try re­cent­ly found to emit more car­bon than the au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try.

He called him­self a “glob­al cit­i­zen,” and trav­eled of­ten across three-plus con­ti­nents. While CEO of As­traZeneca, he com­mis­sioned a flight ser­vice — me­dia-dubbed As­traZeneca air­lines — from Cam­bridge to the com­pa­ny’s oth­er Eu­ro­pean hub in Gothen­burg. He made few, if any, pub­lic state­ments on the en­vi­ron­ment or his com­pa­nies’ im­pact on it.

Now, Pas­cal So­ri­ot has had a change of heart.

As­traZeneca yes­ter­day an­nounced a $1 bil­lion plan to elim­i­nate emis­sions by 2025 and to, by 2030, make their en­tire sup­ply chain car­bon-neg­a­tive. So­ri­ot said think­ing about his grand­kids con­vinced him to push the com­pa­ny to­wards sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

“I have chil­dren and I have a grand­son, and they’re go­ing to look at me and say, ‘what did you do?'” So­ri­ot told Bloomberg News from Davos, Switzer­land where the an­nu­al World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum meet­ing is un­der­way. This year has been heav­i­ly fo­cused on cli­mate change.

As­traZeneca is not the first Big Phar­ma com­pa­ny to make such a com­mit­ment, al­though the in­dus­try as a whole has been slow to adopt such pledges. Take­da told a JP Mor­gan crowd last week that they were aim­ing to be car­bon-neu­tral in 2020. No­vo Nordisk said in April they were on track to use on­ly re­new­ables in 2020. No­var­tis al­so has a car­bon-neu­tral-by-2025 plan, al­though it doesn’t in­clude their sup­ply chain.

No­tably, none of the eight largest US phar­ma com­pa­nies — J&J, Pfiz­er, Mer­ck, Ab­b­Vie, Ab­bott Lab­o­ra­to­ries, Eli Lil­ly, Am­gen and Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb — have made sim­i­lar com­mit­ments, al­though al­most every­one has a ded­i­cat­ed por­tion of their web­site in which they “rec­og­nize,” “be­lieve,” or “un­der­stand,” the risks posed by cli­mate change and their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to mit­i­gate that risk.

Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb’s com­mit­ment is to a 5% re­duc­tion in green­house gas emis­sions by 2020. Mer­ck, one of the more com­mit­ted phar­ma com­pa­nies, has promised to make all “ex­ter­nal” elec­tric­i­ty re­new­able, but not un­til 2040. Eli Lil­ly — far and away the worst emit­ter of any phar­ma com­pa­ny as of 2015, ac­cord­ing to the pa­per cit­ed at the top of the ar­ti­cle, ac­count­ing for near­ly 4-times the emis­sions of As­traZeneca — said they would make a 20% re­duc­tion by 2020. Through 2017, they were 8.4% of the way there. A fur­ther up­date promised for June of last year, could not be im­me­di­ate­ly found on their web­site.

As­traZeneca will make them­selves car­bon-neu­tral by con­vert­ing to all re­new­ables for heat and pow­er and by switch­ing over their ve­hi­cles to elec­tric cars, both with­in 5 years. They will al­so be­gin plant­i­ng the “AZ For­est” — a 50-mil­lion tree re­for­esta­tion ef­fort, first in Aus­tralia and then in France, In­done­sia and else­where.

They will al­so un­veil a new gen­er­a­tion of me­tered-dose in­halers. These com­mon forms of in­halers tra­di­tion­al­ly re­lease hy­dro­flu­o­roalka­ne, a high­ly po­tent green­house gas.

So­ri­ot told Bloomberg that, on top of his own con­scious­ness, em­ploy­ees had asked for the com­pa­ny to make a sweep­ing com­mit­ment. But he said one group hadn’t, and it’s part of the rea­son oth­er com­pa­nies have yet to elim­i­nate emis­sions: Share­hold­ers.

“The pres­sure is not – I be­lieve not – yet strong enough, to be frank,” So­ri­ot said. “Com­pa­nies will have to be in­cen­tivized to do some­thing.”

Aimmune’s patients won’t ever be able to eat Reese’s, but every time they open a capsule, they’ll be consuming a product Nestlé helped produce.

Since the immunotherapy company completed its Phase II studies, Nestlé has become one of its largest backers. They invested $145 million in 2016 and $98 million in 2018. And today, days after Aimmune won FDA approval for their peanut allergy drug Palforzia, Nestlé announced a $200 million equity investment. They will now have invested $473 million and command 19.9% of the company.

As the application of real-world data in clinical practice and drug development becomes the reality for a growing number of physicians as well as drugmakers, GV and a marquee syndicate are betting some real dollars on one San Francisco player.

The crew formerly known as Google Ventures is leading a $100 million round for Verana Health, which has just acquired a smaller company specializing in large-scale data architecture solutions dubbed PYA Analytics. Bain Capital Ventures, Casdin Capital and Define Ventures also chipped in.

The Gates Foundation has signed up to take a role in the growing public-private response to a brewing pandemic.

The nonprofit group said Wednesday it is prepared to spend up to $100 million to help spur new R&D into vaccines, diagnostics and therapies while reserving part of that money for detection and containment work.

“Multilateral organizations, national governments, the private sector and philanthropies must work together to slow the pace of the outbreak, help countries protect their most vulnerable citizens and accelerate the development of the tools to bring this epidemic under control,” said new Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman. “Our hope is that these resources will help catalyze a rapid and effective international response. This response should be guided by science, not fear, and it should build on the steps that the World Health Organization has taken to date.”

Laquinimod was the drug that was going to save Teva.

Over 14 years, the Israeli pharma started the compound on at least 15 clinical trials, 6 of them Phase III. They wanted it to replace the blockbuster multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone. But it failed late-stage study after late-stage study, not only in MS but also Huntington’s. And in 2018, after the fourth major whiff in 18 months, Teva returned the drug and all its rights back to sender: Sweden’s Active Bio.

→ US President Trump’s State of the Union address may have visibly elicited the ire of Speaker Nancy Pelosi but he did emphasize again the need for bipartisan legislation to lower drug prices. A survey conducted by GlobalData showed that 49% of global industry respondents believe that drug pricing and reimbursement constraints will have the greatest negative impact on the pharmaceutical industry this year.