Wel­come to CPhI week!

Tues­day marked the open­ing of this year’s CPhI Glob­al con­fer­ence in Mi­lan, Italy, in what marks its re­turn to an on­site event for the first time since 2019.

In many ways, this year’s CPhI is dif­fer­ent for us here at End­points News. We aren’t on site — as we cer­tain­ly plan to be next year — so we can’t give you the in­side scoop you can ex­pect in the fu­ture. How­ev­er, our team has been close­ly fol­low­ing the biggest trends from the past year and are stay­ing abreast of what CPhI’s sta­ble of ex­perts are say­ing about the fu­ture of the in­dus­try.

First, man­ag­ing ed­i­tor Kyle Blanken­ship dives head­first in­to some of the biggest trends from the past 12 months in the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try — and a few things to ex­pect in the year ahead.

Then, in the first of a se­ries of trend pieces, man­u­fac­tur­ing re­porter Josh Sul­li­van looks at the growth of the CMO in­dus­try, which is poised to take its place among the big dogs in terms of man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty in the com­ing years.

Josh then dives in­to the fu­ture of au­toma­tion in bio­phar­ma, the grow­ing role of con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ing in Chi­na, the sky-high con­fi­dence the in­dus­try has go­ing in­to 2022, and fi­nal­ly the lin­ger­ing ef­fects an in­spec­tion back­log could have on the in­dus­try writ large.

As al­ways, if you have any feed­back, we’d be hap­py to hear from you. En­joy CPhI, and if you’re in Mi­lan: Ciao!

President Joe Biden made clear in his “finish the job” State of the Union address last night that one of those jobs to be finished is insulin prices.

Biden’s push again to tackle insulin prices, after Republicans rebuffed the idea last summer and just after Biden won Medicare drug price negotiations/caps via the Inflation Reduction Act, shows how heavily he’s leaning into this work.

Six weeks into his new role at the helm of Teva Pharmaceutical, Richard Francis said it’s time to “get back to growth,” starting with a good look at the company’s priorities.

The chief executive has kicked off a strategic review, he announced during Teva’s quarterly call, which will continue over the next several months and produce results sometime in the middle of 2023. That means some pipeline cuts may be in store, he told Endpoints News, while declining to offer much more detail.

FDA Commissioner Rob Califf joined the heads of the CDC and NIH in the hot seat today before a key House subcommittee, explaining that there needs to be a much faster, more coordinated way to oversee vaccine safety, and that foreign biopharma inspections, halted for years due to the pandemic, are slowly ramping up again.

Califf, who stressed to the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Health that the CDC also needs better data, made clear that the FDA’s ability to monitor the safety of vaccines “would also benefit greatly by a coordinated federal public health data reporting authority.”