Just as Bio­con signs off on a $3.3 bil­lion buy­out of their shared biosim­i­lars busi­ness, Vi­a­tris’s pend­ing law­suit for its con­tro­ver­sial EpiPen might be no more — if the court signs off on it.

Keep­ing de­tails short, the phar­ma snuck in an an­nounce­ment about its EpiPen prod­uct in its Q4 re­port:

The Com­pa­ny has agreed, sub­ject to ap­proval by the Court, to a $264 mil­lion set­tle­ment, while deny­ing any al­le­ga­tion of wrong­do­ing, to re­solve the EpiPen Au­to-In­jec­tor in­di­rect pur­chas­er class ac­tion cas­es pend­ing in the U.S. Dis­trict Court for the Dis­trict of Kansas.

The phar­ma added that “the Board of Di­rec­tors be­lieves that this set­tle­ment is in the best in­ter­ests of the Com­pa­ny and its stake­hold­ers. The res­o­lu­tion of these in­di­rect pur­chas­er cas­es will al­low the Com­pa­ny to move for­ward and con­tin­ue fo­cus­ing on its strate­gic pri­or­i­ties.”

Heather Bresch

The phar­ma play­er, cre­at­ed out of the merg­er of Up­john and My­lan, came un­der heavy fire amid ac­cu­sa­tions of greed and price goug­ing af­ter news sur­faced in 2016 that the price of My­lan’s EpiPen, an au­to-in­jec­tor to treat se­vere al­ler­gic re­ac­tions, in­creased from about $100 in 2007 to $608 for a two-pack. At the time, the com­pa­ny had rev­enues of $11 bil­lion a year — fu­el­ing scathing cri­tiques about ris­ing US drug prices.

Then-My­lan CEO Heather Bresch, daugh­ter of De­mo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tor Joe Manchin, left the com­pa­ny af­ter the merg­er in 2020. But she vig­or­ous­ly de­fend­ed the price in­crease at the time be­fore the Con­gress Over­sight and Gov­ern­ment Re­form Com­mit­tee, say­ing that “Price and ac­cess ex­ist in a bal­ance, and we be­lieve we have struck that bal­ance.”

Fast for­ward one year, and My­lan fi­nal­ized a $465 mil­lion set­tle­ment with the US De­part­ment of Jus­tice to re­solve claims that it over­charged the gov­ern­ment for the EpiPen.

Daniel Crab­tree

The class-ac­tion case, brought be­fore Kansas City, KS judge Daniel Crab­tree, was on be­half of con­sumers and third-par­ty pay­ers such as in­sur­ers — with the plain­tiffs seek­ing $1 bil­lion in dam­ages, a sum that un­der some state an­titrust laws could have been mul­ti­plied.

The law­suit ac­cused both My­lan and Pfiz­er, which man­u­fac­tured the EpiPen, of en­gag­ing in an­ti­com­pet­i­tive con­duct — po­ten­tial­ly al­low­ing the com­pa­nies to main­tain a mo­nop­oly over the mar­ket for the de­vices. While the case was slat­ed to go on tri­al this month, Crab­tree dis­missed much of the case against My­lan last June, leav­ing on­ly a claim con­cern­ing a 2012 patent lit­i­ga­tion set­tle­ment with gener­ic drug­mak­er Te­va.

Pfiz­er had al­so set­tled last year for $345 mil­lion.

The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) recommended nine drugs for approval this week while also giving thumbs up for six expanded indications, including Novo Nordisk’s approved obesity medication Wegovy for younger people. Wegovy is already approved as an obesity treatment in the EU for adults, and the new indication would allow prescriptions for adolescents aged 12 and older.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

RNA biotech GreenLight Biosciences has been handed an offer for potential acquisition.

GreenLight said in a release that it has received a non-binding “indication of interest” from Fall Line Endurance Fund to acquire GreenLight’s capital stock for $0.60 per share in cash. The release said any potential agreement between the two parties would depend on certain conditions.

Through a special committee, the biotech will evaluate the offer but added there’s no certainty a deal will go forward. GreenLight will also not make any more announcements until a deal comes through or “otherwise determines” a statement is necessary.