Large phar­ma com­pa­nies are re­think­ing their R&D and man­u­fac­tur­ing pledges in the UK as ten­sion deep­ens over what they say is a lack of gov­ern­ment ac­tion to im­prove the life sci­ence in­vest­ment space.

Last week, Mer­ck scrapped its plans for a $1.3 bil­lion lab in Lon­don. Eli Lil­ly said it's hold­ing off on bring­ing its biotech in­cu­ba­tor Gate­way Labs to the UK. And As­traZeneca halt­ed a $271 mil­lion in­vest­ment in its Cam­bridge re­search site.

Mer­ck­'s de­ci­sion to can­cel its in­vest­ment "is part of a con­cern­ing pat­tern,” Lord Robert Mair, chair of the UK's Lords Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Com­mit­tee, told End­points News. The com­mit­tee is a part of the House of Lords in the UK par­lia­ment and re­views poli­cies re­lat­ed to sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.

HHS Sec­re­tary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has ap­point­ed five new mem­bers to the Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Im­mu­niza­tion Prac­tices ahead of a crit­i­cal meet­ing slat­ed for lat­er this week.

The new pan­elists have var­ied in­fec­tious dis­ease ex­pe­ri­ence, sim­i­lar to the mem­bers cho­sen by Kennedy in June. They in­clude Hillary Black­burn, Eve­lyn Grif­fin, Kirk Mil­hoan, Ray­mond Pol­lak and Cather­ine Stein.

Mil­hoan is a se­nior fel­low with the In­de­pen­dent Med­ical Al­liance, a coali­tion that in­cludes many Covid-19 vac­cine skep­tics and pro­mot­ers of un­proven reme­dies like iver­mectin. One study co-writ­ten by peo­ple af­fil­i­at­ed with the al­liance, for­mer­ly known as the Front Line Covid-19 Crit­i­cal Care Al­liance, was cor­rect­ed af­ter “sev­er­al au­thors failed to dis­close all rel­e­vant con­flicts of in­ter­est.” Mil­hoan was not an au­thor on that study.

Bris­tol My­ers Squibb is sell­ing its ma­jor­i­ty stake in the Sino-Amer­i­can Shang­hai Squibb Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals Lim­it­ed joint ven­ture, which was the first US phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal joint ven­ture es­tab­lished in Chi­na.

The val­ue of its 60% stake was about $240 mil­lion, based on cal­cu­la­tions done us­ing Shang­hai Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ in­ter­im fi­nan­cial re­port as of June 30. Shang­hai Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals owns 30% of the joint ven­ture, and its eq­ui­ty was worth $120 mil­lion USD (853,762,000 RMB), ac­cord­ing to the re­port. Bris­tol My­ers de­clined to share the amount of the sale.

Bris­tol My­ers sold its stake to Hill­house In­vest­ment Group, an Asia in­vest­ment firm that start­ed in 2005, ac­cord­ing to a source fa­mil­iar with the deal.

The Sino-Amer­i­can Shang­hai Squibb Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, or SASS, joint ven­ture was es­tab­lished in 1982, and was held among Bris­tol My­ers, Shang­hai Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, and Sinopharm Group, which holds a 10% stake. The joint ven­ture made both pre­scrip­tion and over-the-counter drugs for a va­ri­ety of ail­ments.

A fed­er­al ap­peals court on Fri­day re­ject­ed Ab­b­Vie’s at­tempt to block Mis­sis­sip­pi’s 340B law.

The US Court of Ap­peals for the Fifth Cir­cuit up­held a low­er court’s de­ci­sion deny­ing Ab­b­Vie a pre­lim­i­nary in­junc­tion, af­ter de­ter­min­ing that the com­pa­ny “has not shown a sub­stan­tial like­li­hood of suc­cess on the mer­its” of its claims.

The rul­ing deals an­oth­er blow to drug­mak­ers in their fight against state laws that they say im­per­mis­si­bly ex­pand the scope of the fed­er­al drug dis­count pro­gram.

The 340B pro­gram re­quires phar­ma com­pa­nies to of­fer drug dis­counts to cer­tain health or­ga­ni­za­tions serv­ing low-in­come pa­tients. Many or­ga­ni­za­tions have re­lied on third-par­ty “con­tract phar­ma­cies” to dis­pense the dis­count­ed drugs. But sev­er­al drug­mak­ers, in­clud­ing Ab­b­Vie, have sought to lim­it the num­ber of phar­ma­cies they sup­ply to.