No­var­tis is the lat­est drug­mak­er to in­vest in its Chi­nese foot­print, with a pledge of more than 3.3 bil­lion yuan ($480 mil­lion) to bol­ster two man­u­fac­tur­ing and R&D sites.

The com­pa­ny will pour 1.5 bil­lion yuan ($218 mil­lion) in­to ex­pand­ing its tablets and cap­sules site in the Chang­ping dis­trict of Bei­jing, ac­cord­ing to a Sun­day re­lease in Chi­nese. Around 1.8 bil­lion yuan ($262 mil­lion) will go to launch­ing the "sec­ond phase" of the drug­mak­er’s Chi­na head­quar­ters and R&D fa­cil­i­ty in Shang­hai. It was­n't clear what that phase en­tailed, and No­var­tis did­n't im­me­di­ate­ly com­ment be­fore pub­li­ca­tion.

No­var­tis joins the ranks of As­traZeneca and Eli Lil­ly, which have al­so made re­cent in­vest­ments in Chi­na. The pledges come at a time when West­ern drug­mak­ers are look­ing to tap in­to Chi­na's ear­ly-stage re­search.

In a rare move, the FDA last week post­ed pho­tographs of di­lap­i­dat­ed build­ings as part of a warn­ing let­ter for a Daman, In­dia-based drug man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty.

The pho­tographs are the lat­est sign that FDA Com­mis­sion­er Mar­ty Makary is tak­ing a tougher stance on for­eign drug man­u­fac­tur­ers.

Fol­low­ing a five-day unan­nounced in­spec­tion last Ju­ly, the FDA warn­ing let­ter is­sued to Pat­cos Cos­met­ics de­scribes "in­san­i­tary con­di­tions," par­tic­u­lar­ly in the sinks in the pro­duc­tion area that Pat­cos used "as a source of wa­ter for clean­ing pro­duc­tion equip­ment." The com­pa­ny's web­site says that it man­u­fac­tures oral care and aerosols on a con­tract ba­sis.

The agency pub­lished the fol­low­ing pho­to of the sinks as part of the let­ter:

In­s­med's Phase 3 tri­al win for Arikayce in a par­tic­u­lar kind of lung in­fec­tion sets up the drug to ex­pand in­to the front-line set­ting — pos­si­bly giv­ing the biotech a sec­ond pro­ject­ed block­buster.

The com­pa­ny said that Arikayce was bet­ter than place­bo at both im­prov­ing symp­toms and re­duc­ing bac­te­r­i­al lev­els when giv­en on top of es­tab­lished an­tibac­te­ri­als in pa­tients with a new case of My­cobac­teri­um avi­um com­plex (MAC) lung in­fec­tion who had not re­ceived pri­or an­tibi­otics.

In­smed need­ed a hit in the study: its shares IN­SM are down more than 20% across 2026 so far.

Sub­jects in the Phase 3b EN­CORE tri­al who re­ceived In­smed’s drug for a year had a 17.8-point im­prove­ment on a score de­signed to mea­sure res­pi­ra­to­ry symp­toms, which was ad­min­is­tered a month af­ter treat­ment end­ed. Those in the place­bo group im­proved by 14.7 points, a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence.

Pfiz­er's fi­nal-stage tri­al of its long-await­ed Ly­me dis­ease vac­cine missed its pri­ma­ry end­point, but the drug­mak­er said it still plans to try to take the ex­per­i­men­tal shot to reg­u­la­tors for ap­proval.

The com­pa­ny said there had been too few Ly­me cas­es to get a firm re­sult in the tri­al of the vac­cine, known as LB6V.

That re­sult­ed in a con­fi­dence in­ter­val on one of the pre-spec­i­fied analy­sis for which the low­est end was be­low 20%, miss­ing the Phase 3 study’s pri­ma­ry end­point. Con­fi­dence in­ter­vals with wide ranges sug­gest too lit­tle da­ta for analy­sis, and Pfiz­er cit­ed “few­er than an­tic­i­pat­ed Ly­me dis­ease cas­es” in its an­nounce­ment of the re­sults.

A spokesper­son for Pfiz­er did not say how many cas­es were ac­crued in each arm of the tri­al, say­ing more da­ta will be re­leased lat­er.

Apogee Ther­a­peu­tics said its mod­er­ate-to-se­vere eczema can­di­date could of­fer much more con­ve­nient dos­ing over stan­dard treat­ments based on its lat­est mid-stage re­sults.

Mon­day’s Phase 2 main­te­nance