A day af­ter the House passed a bill that would pro­tect Amer­i­cans’ right to con­tra­cep­tives, biotech ex­ecs say they will keep fight­ing for bet­ter ac­cess to nov­el birth con­trol prod­ucts.

The big ques­tion now is whether the leg­is­la­tion will sur­vive the Sen­ate floor.

The House vot­ed 228-195 on Thurs­day to pass a law that would en­sure the right to ob­tain and pro­vide con­tra­cep­tives. It would al­so al­low pa­tients, providers and fed­er­al or state gov­ern­ments to bring civ­il suits against states or of­fi­cials that vi­o­late the law.

The move comes weeks af­ter the Supreme Court over­turned Roe v. Wade, and Jus­tice Clarence Thomas in­di­cat­ed in his opin­ion that the Court should re­con­sid­er oth­er prece­dents, in­clud­ing one 1965 de­ci­sion that as­sured the right to con­tra­cep­tives.

Eight Re­pub­li­can rep­re­sen­ta­tives joined De­moc­rats in sup­port of the con­tra­cep­tive bill, while some Sen­ate Re­pub­li­cans have in­di­cat­ed they’re on the fence. How­ev­er, there’s a chance the Sen­ate won’t vote un­til af­ter sum­mer re­cess, which be­gins Aug. 5.

Sab­ri­na John­son

“It’s ab­solute­ly an out­stand­ing step,” Daré Bio­science CEO Sab­ri­na John­son said on Fri­day of the House vote.

Her com­pa­ny’s vagi­nal ring, Ovaprene, is about to en­ter a Phase III tri­al this year. “I would love for it to pass in the Sen­ate, but I think re­al­is­ti­cal­ly, giv­en that there were on­ly eight Re­pub­li­cans that sup­port­ed it in the House, I think that it’s go­ing to be a heavy lift,” she added.

Rep. Ang­ie Craig (D-MN) spoke in sup­port of the bill on the House floor on Thurs­day, ar­gu­ing that “an ex­treme GOP, an ex­treme Supreme Court, they want to take away your free­dom and your con­trol over your own lives.”

“It is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary that we take ac­tion to­day,” she said.

Some Re­pub­li­can sen­a­tors have in­di­cat­ed they’re lean­ing to­ward a yes vote, in­clud­ing Su­san Collins (R-ME) who told the Wash­ing­ton Post that she would “most like­ly” of­fer sup­port. Sen. Lisa Murkows­ki (R-AK) told the Post she was work­ing on bi­par­ti­san leg­is­la­tion to cod­i­fy abor­tion and per­haps con­tra­cep­tion rights.

Saun­dra Pel­leti­er

“What I’m pleased about is that we’re re­al­ly try­ing to be proac­tive, and we rec­og­nize that if we aren’t fierce about this — but I mean fierce — we’re go­ing to ac­tu­al­ly cre­ate im­pli­ca­tions for half of our pop­u­la­tion that are go­ing to be dire,” said Saun­dra Pel­leti­er, CEO of Evofem, which mar­kets a non-hor­mon­al con­tra­cep­tive gel called Phexxi.

“We have to get up, suit our­selves in our ar­mor, be­cause this was too easy to have things tak­en away,” she said of the Court’s de­ci­sion in Dobbs v. Jack­son Women’s Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion.

Be­fore the Supreme Court’s de­ci­sion, Evofem strug­gled to get cov­er­age for Phexxi. Now in­sur­ers are start­ing to lis­ten, Pel­leti­er said. Pay­ers cov­er 75% per­cent of prod­uct claims, up from 55% a year ago.

“We just all be­lieve in the same is­sues,” in­clud­ing mak­ing a broad range of con­tra­cep­tives avail­able and af­ford­able to women, said Ag­ile Ther­a­peu­tics CEO Al Al­tomari. Ag­ile mar­kets its birth con­trol patch Twirla as a low­er dose and more con­ve­nient op­tion for women. “We’re al­ready walk­ing the walk … We will con­tin­ue to fight.”

It was great getting back to a live ESMO conference/webinar in Paris followed by a live pop-up event for the Endpoints 11 in Boston. We’re staying on the road in October with our return for a live/streaming EUBIO22 in London.

Silicon Valley Bank’s Nooman Haque and I are once again jumping back into the thick of it with a slate of virtual and live events on October 12. I’ll get the ball rolling with a virtual fireside chat with Novo Nordisk R&D chief Marcus Schindler, covering their pipeline plans and BD work.

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel made clear on the last quarterly call that “now is not the time to slow down.” On Thursday, he made a bit more room in the cockpit.

The company unveiled a new executive role on Thursday, promoting former chief technical operations and quality officer Juan Andres to president of strategic partnerships and enterprise expansion, and poaching a former Novartis exec to take his place.

Gilead is mounting its counterfeit drug lawsuit, naming two “kingpins” and a complex network of conspirators who allegedly sold imitation bottles of its HIV meds, some of which ended up in US pharmacies.

The pharma giant on Wednesday provided an update on what it called a “large-scale, sophisticated counterfeiting conspiracy,” accusing two new defendants of “leading and orchestrating” a scheme to sell hundreds of millions of dollars in illegitimate drugs posing as meds such as Biktarvy and Descovy.