Pfiz­er's chances of be­com­ing an obe­si­ty drug con­tender just hit a ma­jor snag.

A Delaware Chancery judge on Wednes­day af­ter­noon de­nied Pfiz­er's re­quest for a tem­po­rary re­strain­ing or­der that would have pre­vent­ed obe­si­ty biotech Met­sera from ter­mi­nat­ing their Sep­tem­ber merg­er agree­ment.

The de­ci­sion means that Met­sera may go with a high­er dol­lar val­ue of­fer from No­vo Nordisk. Met­sera has a dead­line of 10 a.m. ET on Thurs­day to ac­cept No­vo’s up to $10 bil­lion of­fer from Tues­day. Pfiz­er's lat­est bid came in at up to $8.1 bil­lion.

A Met­sera spokesper­son told End­points News that the com­pa­ny has no com­ment on the rul­ing. Spokesper­sons for Pfiz­er and No­vo did­n't im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to an in­quiry.

US an­titrust reg­u­la­tors are ques­tion­ing No­vo Nordisk's of­fer to buy the obe­si­ty com­pa­ny Met­sera, say­ing that the struc­ture of the deal — which in­cludes a large up­front cash pay­ment to share­hold­ers of the small­er com­pa­ny — may vi­o­late pro­ce­dur­al as­pects of the law.

Ac­cord­ing to a let­ter from the Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion, Novo's of­fer could cir­cum­vent the nor­mal an­titrust re­view process for deals un­der the Hart-Scott-Rodi­no Act.

Novo's of­fer has been struc­tured "in a man­ner that may vi­o­late the pro­ce­dur­al pro­vi­sions of the HSR Act if the par­ties con­sum­mate the trans­ac­tion with­out first fil­ing for pre­merg­er re­view as the HSR Act re­quires," the FTC said in the let­ter, say­ing it raised "sev­er­al po­ten­tial con­cerns." A copy of the let­ter was in­clud­ed in a court fil­ing from Met­sera.

The gov­ern­ment is back in court to de­fend its plan to lim­it spend­ing on over­head re­search costs for NIH grantees.

The US Court of Ap­peals for the First Cir­cuit heard ar­gu­ments on Wednes­day af­ter­noon over whether to up­hold a per­ma­nent in­junc­tion on the NI­H's pro­posed 15% lim­it on in­di­rect cost re­im­burse­ments. The NIH ap­pealed that rul­ing in April, leav­ing un­cer­tain­ty over whether the pay­ment cap would even­tu­al­ly come to fruition.

In­di­rect costs are “what make the in­fra­struc­ture pos­si­ble” for sci­en­tists to do their work, Mass­a­chu­setts state so­lic­i­tor David Kravitz, who is rep­re­sent­ing states chal­leng­ing the pro­posed cap, said dur­ing the ar­gu­ment. He added that the NI­H's plan could “ham­string re­search” at in­sti­tu­tions.

Te­va CEO Richard Fran­cis said Wednes­day that the re­sults of Medicare price ne­go­ti­a­tions for its top-sell­ing brand-name drug Auste­do are “con­sis­tent with our midterm ex­pec­ta­tions.”

“Ne­go­ti­a­tions have end­ed up with a dis­count that’s with­in what we mod­eled,” Fran­cis told End­points News in an in­ter­view on Wednes­day.

Fran­cis de­clined to pro­vide the ne­go­ti­at­ed price for Auste­do. But dur­ing a third-quar­ter earn­ings call ear­li­er on Wednes­day, he told an­a­lysts that Te­va had ex­pect­ed the drug would be se­lect­ed for ne­go­ti­a­tions and fac­tored that pos­si­bil­i­ty in­to its sales fore­casts.

He reaf­firmed Auste­do’s sales tar­get of more than $2.5 bil­lion in 2027, the same year prices reached dur­ing the lat­est cy­cle of