An at­tor­ney for the na­tion’s three ma­jor phar­ma­cy ben­e­fit man­agers told a fed­er­al ap­peals court on Wednes­day that the com­pa­nies would “un­ques­tion­ably” be harmed if FTC pro­ceed­ings against them are al­lowed to con­tin­ue.

Ex­press Scripts, Care­mark, and Op­tum Rx want the US Court of Ap­peals for the Eighth Cir­cuit to pre­lim­i­nar­i­ly block an FTC ad­min­is­tra­tive chal­lenge ac­cus­ing them of an­ti­com­pet­i­tive prac­tices in the in­sulin mar­ket. Daniel Vol­chok, a Wilmer­Hale at­tor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the com­pa­nies, said the in-house FTC pro­ceed­ing is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

“Con­gress has im­per­mis­si­bly giv­en the FTC pow­er that the Con­sti­tu­tion as­signs to the courts,” Vol­chok said dur­ing an oral ar­gu­ment. “With that pow­er, the FTC is bring­ing co­er­cive, high­ly con­se­quen­tial in­ter­nal pro­ceed­ings against pri­vate par­ties.”

The FDA on Wednes­day grant­ed ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval to Bay­er’s tar­get­ed lung can­cer drug for cer­tain HER2 mu­ta­tions, set­ting up com­pe­ti­tion with a Boehringer In­gel­heim drug that was re­cent­ly ap­proved for a sim­i­lar pa­tient group.

The treat­ment, known as sev­aber­tinib, got a thumbs-up for adults with HER2-mu­tat­ed non-small cell lung can­cer who have pre­vi­ous­ly re­ceived treat­ment. The twice-dai­ly oral drug will be mar­ket­ed as Hyr­n­uo. Bay­er did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment on list price.

Hyr­n­uo is a HER2 ty­ro­sine ki­nase in­hibitor. The ap­proval was grant­ed based on re­sults from a study called SO­HO-01 that in­clud­ed lung can­cer pa­tients with HER2 ty­ro­sine ki­nase do­main ac­ti­vat­ing mu­ta­tions. Among 70 pa­tients who had not tried pre­vi­ous HER2-tar­get­ed ther­a­py, 71% saw their tu­mors shrink by at least 30%.

Now that Pfiz­er has ac­quired Met­sera, the New York drug gi­ant is like­ly to be pep­pered with ques­tions about its obe­si­ty R&D strat­e­gy go­ing for­ward.

That was ev­i­dent dur­ing Pfiz­er CFO Dave Den­ton's trip to the Jef­feries Glob­al Health­care Con­fer­ence on Wednes­day morn­ing, in which Met­sera and obe­si­ty were the fo­cus of the first batch of ques­tions from an­a­lyst Akash Tewari. Den­ton called Met­ser­a's R&D en­gine a "mean­ing­ful plat­form for us to com­pete over the next decade."

Asked if Pfiz­er is still look­ing to bring in an oral small mol­e­cule for obe­si­ty and whether it would go to Chi­na for such an as­set, Den­ton replied, "The an­swer is yes to both." Pfiz­er has gone to Chi­na this year for oth­er pacts with 3SBio and again on Wednes­day with Nona Bio­sciences.