With little more than a month to go before a trial begins in a multidistrict litigation (MDL) against several opioid manufacturers, privately owned Purdue Pharma LP is continuing its efforts to settle with all the plaintiffs involved.

Depending on who's talking, the U.S. patent system may, or may not, be in dire need of reform. In a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing Wednesday on the bipartisan STRONGER Patents Act, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) stressed the need to undo the precedent set by the Supreme Court's 13-year-old eBay decision that weakened injunctive relief in infringement cases and to resolve some of the unintended consequences of the 2011 America Invents Act (AIA).

Whether it's mere political posturing or a genuine prescription to control U.S. drug prices, a Democratic plan taking shape in the House provides an idea of what direct government negotiation might look like.

Although investor sentiment continues to remain low and unlikely to change for the remainder of the year, it seems that fact has fallen on deaf ears of those companies looking to graduate to the public ranks. Already in the first few days of September, five biopharma companies have added themselves to the IPO runway, bringing the number of pending U.S. offerings to 12, according to BioWorld.

BEIJING – China's position as a global power in active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) could be jeopardized by the ongoing and worsening trade war with the U.S. Perhaps more worrisome for the pharma industry, any disruption to Chinese supply chains could have a serious impact on drug manufacturing and accessibility globally.

BEIJING – The ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China has helped put the biotechnology field on the U.S. foreign investment restriction list, causing a chilling effect on the market. With the amount of Chinese money entering the U.S. biotech sector dropping sharply, many believe it is the U.S. that is taking the hit in this sector.

Drug pricing legislation will be high on the to-do list when the U.S. Congress returns from its August recess next week, as both the Senate and the House are expected to take action this month on competing packages of provisions aimed at controlling prescription drug prices.

Quarterly financial reporting for public companies is costly and ties up senior management and board members for several days before each quarterly earnings report is released and the 10-Q is filed. Could this process be made more efficient and less frequent, such as a semi-annual filing like many reporting companies based in Europe have implemented? That was one of the questions considered by a roundtable hosted by the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance where key stakeholders delved into the impact of short-termism on U.S. capital markets and whether the SEC's current reporting system needs to be changed to ease administrative and other burdens on reporting companies.

Even as the Trump administration is committing itself to helping states implement laws that would allow drug importation from Canada as a way to combat higher U.S. prescription drug prices, Canadians are pushing back against the idea.

The role of the government in restraining U.S. prices was the underlying subplot of the Senate Finance Committee's markup Thursday of the Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act (PDPRA).