STAT+: Pharmalittle: We’re reading about Trump international drug pricing, Roche to invest $50 billion in U.S. plants, and more

Top of the morning to you, and a fine one it is. Clear blue skies and pleasant breezes are wafting across the Pharmalot campus, where the official mascots are foraging for their breakfast and rousing the neighbors. This means we are free to focus on the matters at hand — rummaging through our to-do list and making cups of stimulation. Our choice today is cinnamon vanilla. As always, we invite you to join us. Meanwhile, here is the latest menu of tidbits to help you get started yourself. We hope that your day is simply smashing and that you conquer the world. And of course, do keep in touch. We have adjusted our settings to accept postcards and telegrams …

Drugmakers have been warned the Trump administration is considering linking U.S. medicine prices to lower amounts paid by other developed countries, Reuters reports. The U.S. pays the most for drugs in the world, often nearly three times that of other developed nations and President Trump has said he wants to close that spread, but has not publicly specified how. In his first term, Trump proposed international reference pricing program but was blocked by a court. Trump has not publicly raised the idea of international reference pricing since taking office, but America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, issued a widely circulated paper last month in which it argued the policy could be implemented within Medicare drug price negotiations. Reference pricing was missing from Trump’s health care executive order last week, but one analyst said by directing the government to obtain better value for medicines covered by Medicare, it may have opened the door to the policy.

Roche announced plans to spend $50 billion on manufacturing and research and development in the U.S., becoming the latest pharmaceutical company to promise greater investment in the face of potential tariffs on the sector, The Financial Times says. The drug and diagnostics company will make the investment over the next five years, forecasting that it would create 1,000 jobs at Roche and 12,000 in total including construction. The company already has an R&D and manufacturing base in the U.S., which includes Genentech. The investment will include expanding and upgrading facilities in Kentucky, Indiana, New Jersey, Oregon, and California, building a new gene therapy factory in Pennsylvania, and a site for producing continuous glucose monitoring devices in Indiana. Roche will also open a new R&D center in Massachusetts, which will conduct artificial intelligence research and be a hub for its efforts to develop cardiovascular, renal, and metabolic drugs.

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