Drip by drip, in hos­pi­tals and chemo clin­ics world­wide, Mer­ck’s Keytru­da has been sav­ing pa­tients’ lives since 2014.

With each drop in­to an IV tube, the block­buster drug re­cruits the body’s nat­ur­al de­fens­es to fight 18 dif­fer­ent types of can­cer. That tiny flow turns in­to a tidal wave of cash for the phar­ma gi­ant, gen­er­at­ing some $150 bil­lion in sales since its in­tro­duc­tion.

It’s no won­der, then, that Mer­ck is in a rush — “with ur­gency,” CEO Rob Davis says — to find ways to ex­pand its rev­enue sources be­fore one of the world’s best-sell­ing drugs los­es its patent pro­tec­tions and small­er ri­vals swoop in with gener­ic ver­sions called biosim­i­lars. Mer­ck made two ma­jor buy­outs last year and, ahead of next week's an­nu­al JP Mor­gan Health­care Con­fer­ence in San Fran­cis­co, is ru­mored to be in­volved in a third.

John­son & John­son is the lat­est drug­mak­er to reach a "most fa­vored na­tion" deal with the White House, agree­ing to low­er drug prices in the US in ex­change for a re­prieve from phar­ma tar­iffs.

Un­der the deal, J&J said it will par­tic­i­pate in TrumpRx, the White House­'s di­rect-to-con­sumer por­tal that's set to launch ear­ly this year. The com­pa­ny will al­so give pa­tients ac­cess to med­i­cines un­der Med­ic­aid at prices com­pa­ra­ble to those in oth­er de­vel­oped coun­tries.

Ab­b­Vie and Re­gen­eron are now the last two phar­ma com­pa­nies that have yet to an­nounce a deal, out of the 17 that re­ceived de­mand let­ters from Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump last sum­mer to im­ple­ment MFN pric­ing. Spokes­peo­ple for those two com­pa­nies did­n't im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to re­quests for com­ment.

The first sign of this year's biotech IPO mar­ket is a good one.

On Fri­day, Ak­tis On­col­o­gy's shares AK­TS rose 25% in their de­but day of trad­ing, an ear­ly sig­nal that af­ter years of dor­mant de­mand for new of­fer­ings, in­vestors are hun­gry for fresh pub­lic com­pa­nies.

"We knew that we were go­ing to be a lit­tle bit of a trail­blaz­er here, but we felt con­fi­dent based on the feed­back we're get­ting from the mar­ket," Ak­tis CEO Matt Ro­den said in an in­ter­view with End­points News on Fri­day.

Go­ing in­to the first day of trad­ing, there were signs that the com­pa­ny would per­form well. It up­sized its of­fer­ing twice, and priced at the top of the range. The $318 mil­lion IPO capped a gang­buster week of fi­nanc­ings for drug de­vel­op­ers, in which pri­vate com­pa­nies raised sev­er­al bil­lion dol­lars and pub­lic biotechs sim­i­lar­ly brought in lots of new cash from fol­low-on share sales.