While the U.S. has historically led the global pharmaceutical industry by pursuing both continual innovation and high quality, those strengths could become areas of weakness in times of political uncertainty, according to PA Consulting expert Andy Prinz.

Several drugs already selected for Medicare price negotiations, including Novo Nordisk A/S’ mega-blockbuster diabetes/weight-loss franchise, could see up to a three-year reprieve if a bipartisan bill recently introduced in the U.S. House and Senate becomes law.

On March 1, 2025, former NIH director Francis Collins’ announced that he had fully resigned from the NIH, where he continued to lead a laboratory after his resignation as director. Collins gave no reason for his resignation, but it comes just before this week’s confirmation hearings for Jay Bhattacharya, who is U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the NIH and who Collins called a “fringe epidemiologist” during the COVID pandemic. It is a bitter irony that when Collins resigned as NIH director in 2021, then-President Joe Biden said that “countless researchers will aspire to follow in his footsteps.”

The U.K.’s national health service (NHS) is rolling out a new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tool which can predict a patient’s risk of falling with a 97% accuracy rate. The AI software designed by Cera Care Ltd. is already in use in more than two-thirds of NHS integrated care systems across the country and NHS England hopes that the tool will prevent around 2,000 falls and hospital admissions each day.

A slow-down in EU medical device audits due to the long-delayed transition to the EU Medical Device Regulation is leading to increased applications to Australia as small businesses bypass Europe altogether.

Martin Makary, President Donald Trump’s pick to head the U.S. FDA, took his turn before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee March 6, a week ahead of the committee’s confirmation votes on both him and Jay Bhattacharya as the next NIH director. The committee votes will set the stage for the full Senate to vote on confirming both nominees later this month.

The first treatment for macular telangiectasia type 2 is set to enter the market following U.S. FDA approval of NT-501 (revakinagene taroretcel) from Neurotech Pharmaceuticals Inc., a privately held company that has been quietly advancing its encapsulated cell therapy platform for more than two decades.

CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd. has obtained clearance from China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) to conduct clinical trials with JMT-108 for advanced malignant tumors.

Jay Bhattacharya will have his work cut out for him if he wins confirmation as the next director of the U.S. NIH. Besides getting NIH committees back on track to evaluate grant applications and calming the fears of researchers and other staff who have seen about 1,200 colleagues cut from their ranks in recent weeks, Bhattacharya will face the task of rebuilding public trust in the NIH itself.