The AI race in biopharma is heating up. Roche and Nvidia partnered on what they’re calling the "largest announced hybrid-cloud AI factory" in the industry. The announcement comes just a few months after Eli Lilly unveiled plans for its own AI-powered supercomputer, which Lilly claimed would be biopharma’s most powerful.

Roche’s Genentech originally signed a deal with Nvidia in 2023. The newly expanded agreement covers the broader Roche enterprise, spanning its drugs and diagnostics businesses and areas like discovery, manufacturing and sales. The computing power will be used to train and run AI models across those functions.

🌎Drugmakers are looking for ways to mitigate the potential effect of the Trump administration’s “most favored nation” US drug pricing policy on future launches, Anna Brown reported this week. Lawyers say they’re receiving inquiries about whether amending licensing contracts could be a way to do so.

MFN is at the forefront of companies’ minds when looking to enter a new licensing deal, according to Adam Golden, an M&A and IP transactions lawyer at Freshfields. A typical licensing agreement might involve a drug developer licensing an asset to a large commercial partner in territories where the developer can’t execute the launch itself. Now, lawyers are getting questions about whether biotechs can ask their overseas partners to delay launches to avoid having a reference price that could lower the price in the US.

Established licensing deals are also being reviewed, but they may be difficult to change, especially if pharma companies want to reduce royalties, Golden told Endpoints. 

Structure Therapeutics may have a serious GLP-1 contender on its hands. The biotech’s once-daily pill, aleniglipron, produced a placebo-adjusted average weight loss of 16.3%, or about 39 pounds, at the 180 mg dose after 44 weeks. Results came from a Phase 2 study in patients with obesity or overweight with at least one weight-related comorbidity. Patients on the higher 240 mg dose saw a placebo-adjusted weight loss of 16%. 

💰Verily has raised $300 million in outside funding that ends parent company Alphabet’s controlling position in the healthcare innovation company, Endpoints’ Shelby Livingston learned exclusively this week. Alphabet remains a significant minority investor. But Verily CEO Stephen Gillett said the move marks the company’s “next phase of growth.”

Verily has been making moves to step out of Alphabet’s shadow, with plans to eventually go public. It’s been divesting business units, including its insurance business Granular, and sharpening its focus. Most recently, it’s zeroed in on an AI healthcare platform, called Pre, that powers all Verily solutions.

A federal judge issued a stay on the agency’s January decision to downgrade recommendations for six vaccines on the childhood vaccine schedule. He also suspended the appointments of 13 members on the CDC’s reconstituted vaccine advisory panel, and stayed the votes taken by those members. 

The American Academy of Pediatrics and several other health organizations filed the lawsuit in July over changes to Covid-19 vaccine recommendations for kids and pregnant women, and have since amended the complaint multiple times to challenge additional actions, including the January changes to the childhood vaccine schedule and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s reconstitution of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Plaintiffs said in an amended complaint that the agency failed to consider whether changes to the childhood vaccine schedule “would lead to increases in serious illness and death due to vaccine-preventable illnesses.” But attorneys for HHS argued in court documents that the changes to the childhood vaccine schedule were “reasonable and reasonably explained.” Read more about the case here.