The US In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Com­mis­sion is open­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Chi­na's sup­port for biotech as well as the coun­try's pric­ing prac­tices, look­ing at whether the gov­ern­ment there "ma­nip­u­lat­ed mar­kets and dis­ad­van­taged Amer­i­can biotech­nol­o­gy firms."

The trade com­mis­sion's role is most­ly ad­vi­so­ry, but the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was man­dat­ed by Con­gress in a re­cent spend­ing bill, and could be a pre­lude to ac­tion by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion that could lead to re­stric­tions on deal­mak­ing or oth­er pol­i­cy mea­sures meant to slow Chi­na's in­dus­try.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion comes as the US has faced an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive Chi­nese biotech sec­tor, with a surge in li­cens­ing deals by US and Eu­ro­pean bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies to ac­quire as­sets from Chi­nese biotechs, of­ten at a low­er cost than could be paid to West­ern biotechs.

Last April, Chi­nese reg­u­la­tors ap­proved Be­lief Bio­Med’s gene ther­a­py for the bleed­ing dis­or­der he­mo­phil­ia B, set­ting up a chal­lenge to one of the prici­est med­i­cines.

The treat­ment marked the first he­mo­phil­ia gene ther­a­py in Chi­na to be de­vel­oped and man­u­fac­tured en­tire­ly by a do­mes­tic com­pa­ny. Be­lief Bio­Med priced it at $350,000, one-tenth the cost of a ri­val ther­a­py that sells for $3.5 mil­lion in the US.

In the year since, it's be­come clear that Be­lief Bio­Med’s ap­proval is a bell­wether: In a glob­al race to de­vel­op cheap­er and po­ten­tial­ly bet­ter al­ter­na­tives to the world’s 10 most ex­pen­sive med­i­cines, Chi­na has pulled ahead.

An End­points News analy­sis of clin­i­cal tri­al data­bas­es shows that Chi­na ac­counts for 48 of the 77 pro­grams tar­get­ing this group of ul­tra-ex­pen­sive gene ther­a­pies. Chi­na's to­tal is more than dou­ble the num­ber in the US and sev­en times as many as Eu­rope.

WuXi Bi­o­log­ic­s' an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate spin­out WuXi XDC said on Fri­day that it will be work­ing with Earendil Labs to de­vel­op new AD­Cs.

AI-dri­ven bi­o­log­ics de­vel­op­er Earendil will have ac­cess to WuXi XD­C's pay­load-link­er tech­nol­o­gy called WuX­iTe­can-2. WuXi XDC will de­vel­op and man­u­fac­ture the ADC com­po­nents, while Earendil will fo­cus on reg­u­la­to­ry sub­mis­sions and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the as­sets.

The deal is worth up to $885 mil­lion, cov­er­ing an up­front pay­ment through com­mer­cial mile­stone pay­ments. Earendil has two sep­a­rate deals with Sanofi to de­vel­op bis­pecifics.

WuXi Bi­o­log­ics and its en­ti­ties con­tin­ue to se­cure new deals — and have been more open about shar­ing them pub­licly — es­pe­cial­ly now that the threat of the Biose­cure Act ap­pears to have sub­sided. In con­trast, its sis­ter com­pa­ny WuXi AppTec has made few­er pub­lic an­nounce­ments.

Mer­ck is shed­ding more than 150 jobs in North Car­oli­na, al­most all of which are tied to a vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ing plant that was un­veiled less than a year ago.

The head­count re­duc­tions were dis­closed in a state work­force fil­ing this week, show­ing 147 cuts at the Durham fa­cil­i­ty and an­oth­er sev­en lay­offs at a near­by satel­lite of­fice.

“We con­tin­u­ous­ly as­sess our op­er­a­tions and evolv­ing busi­ness needs and ad­just as need­ed to en­sure the ef­fec­tive­ness of our man­u­fac­tur­ing net­work in de­liv­er­ing re­li­able, com­pli­ant sup­ply of our med­i­cines and vac­cines,” a com­pa­ny spokesper­son told End­points News on Fri­day.

Mer­ck opened the $1 bil­lion plant in March 2025 to boost pro­duc­tion of its HPV vac­cine Gar­dasil, a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar mon­ey­mak­er that nonethe­less has seen a sig­nif­i­cant slump in the last year. De­mand in Chi­na has nose­dived amid a na­tion­wide health­care-re­lat­ed probe that’s chilled im­mu­niza­tion ef­forts.

Fol­low­ing the col­lapse of a $3 bil­lion bid for Bavar­i­an Nordic by pri­vate eq­ui­ty firms in No­vem­ber, CEO Paul Chap­lin is step­ping down af­ter more than three decades at the com­pa­ny due to "per­son­al rea­sons."

Chap­lin, who has been CEO of the Dan­ish vac­cine mak­er since 2014, will con­tin­ue in his role un­til the end of this year, be­fore re­lo­cat­ing to Aus­tralia with his fam­i­ly or un­til a suc­ces­sor is ap­point­ed. The board has start­ed its hunt for a new CEO, a Mon­day press re­lease states.

Bavar­i­an’s stock was down about 2.84% Mon­day on the Copen­hagen stock ex­change.

In No­vem­ber, the com­pa­ny’s chair­man Luc De­bruyne stepped down, fol­low­ing the break­down of Nordic Cap­i­tal and Per­mi­ra’s po­ten­tial $3 bil­lion takeover of Bavar­i­an. The firms pulled out af­ter the bid failed to muster up enough sup­port from the vac­cine mak­er's share­hold­ers.