No­vo Nordisk will launch the pill form of its obe­si­ty med We­govy in the US on Mon­day, say­ing that it could cost in­sured pa­tients as lit­tle as $25 per month. Pre­scrip­tions for the starter dose of the pill can be filled from 8 a.m. ET; high­er strength pills will be avail­able by end of the week.

This price is rough­ly on par with what in­sured pa­tients tak­ing the in­ject­ed form of We­govy pay.

The We­govy pill will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly cheap­er for in­sured pa­tients than for pa­tients who pay out of pock­et. The cash-pay price that No­vo agreed to with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion in No­vem­ber was $149 per month for the starter dose. This price still stands for self-pay­ing cus­tomers, ac­cord­ing to the We­govy pill web­site.

Cri­net­ics’ first sales num­bers are off to a strong start.

The new­ly-com­mer­cial biotech said sales for its rare dis­ease drug Pal­soni­fy sur­passed $5 mil­lion in the fi­nal three months of 2025, the first full quar­ter af­ter its FDA ap­proval last Sep­tem­ber. The sales come from more than 200 in­di­vid­u­als fill­ing out en­roll­ment forms, Cri­net­ics said. An­a­lysts had es­ti­mat­ed rev­enue be­tween $2.5 mil­lion and $3.7 mil­lion for the quar­ter.

Cri­net­ics’ stock price CRNX rose as much as 20% pre­mar­ket, but set­tled to about a 9% rise over Fri­day’s close by ear­ly Mon­day af­ter­noon.

Pal­soni­fy is Cri­net­ic­s' first drug to win ap­proval. It’s in­di­cat­ed for adults with acromegaly, a rare con­di­tion that oc­curs when the pi­tu­itary gland pro­duces too much growth hor­mone. The com­pa­ny is bank­ing on Pal­soni­fy — a once-dai­ly pill — to be more con­ve­nient than oth­er ap­proved treat­ments, in­clud­ing No­var­tis’ San­do­statin and Ipsen’s So­mat­u­line De­pot.

Dwin­dling FDA ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee meet­ings in 2025 set the stage for few­er op­por­tu­ni­ties for the agency to dis­cuss dif­fi­cult reg­u­la­to­ry ques­tions with out­side ex­perts, po­ten­tial­ly lead­ing to more ques­tion­able ap­provals.

The FDA in 2025 held just sev­en ad­comm meet­ings for in­di­vid­ual drugs, down from 12 in 2024, 18 in 2023, and 10 in 2022, ac­cord­ing to a re­port pub­lished Sat­ur­day by the in­vest­ment bank Jef­feries. None of these meet­ings have been held since Ju­ly, and so far, none have been sched­uled for 2026.

As the FDA fo­cus­es on new drugs' ben­e­fits out­weigh­ing their risks, ad­comms typ­i­cal­ly fo­cus on con­tro­ver­sial drug ap­proval de­ci­sions or bor­der­line da­ta, as with a drug that has both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive tri­al re­sults.

The US will no longer rec­om­mend about a half-dozen vac­cines for all kids, in a mas­sive and swift over­haul of the child­hood vac­ci­na­tion sched­ule.

Se­nior fed­er­al health of­fi­cials told re­porters on a call Mon­day that they were large­ly align­ing the US’ sched­ule with Den­mark and will rec­om­mend rou­tine vac­ci­na­tions for 11 dis­eases in­stead of 17. Tra­cy Beth Høeg, the act­ing di­rec­tor of FDA’s drug di­vi­sion who has been a top agency ad­vi­sor on vac­cine guid­ance, hint­ed at the change when she pre­sent­ed on that coun­try’s guid­ance last month to a CDC pan­el.

Fol­low­ing Høeg’s pre­sen­ta­tion, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is­sued a pres­i­den­tial mem­o­ran­dum di­rect­ing health of­fi­cials to change the sched­ule.

Charles Riv­er CEO Jim Fos­ter is plan­ning to re­tire on May 5, af­ter hold­ing the po­si­tion for over three decades.

Fos­ter led the ser­vice provider through its ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing in 2000. Dur­ing his tenure, Charles Riv­er com­plet­ed over 50 ac­qui­si­tions, which saw the small re­search firm be­come a glob­al com­pa­ny.

Charles Riv­er’s chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer Bir­git Gir­shick will re­place Fos­ter, who will re­main on the board as a non-ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor. Lead in­de­pen­dent di­rec­tor Mar­tin Mack­ay will take over as chair of the board from Fos­ter.

Else­where, sev­er­al com­pa­nies an­nounced over the past few weeks that they are boost­ing their glob­al pro­duc­tion foot­prints.