Of all the issues that could be on the table at the talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and China President Xi Jinping, the life sciences sector is the “sweet spot” for collaboration between the two countries in a way that would benefit the world, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said in a Brookings Institution webinar in advance of the two-day summit that starts May 14.

It’s back to the drawing board for the U.S. CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). After a year of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy gutting the panel and restocking it mostly with people who share his views on vaccines, the CDC published a notice in the May 19 Federal Register saying it’s withdrawing the amended ACIP charter renewal issued April 6 and is instead “re-establishing” the committee.

China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) has granted clinical trial clearance to SYH-2095 tablets, a novel lysine acetyltransferase 6 (KAT6) inhibitor codeveloped by CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd. and Hangzhou Innogate Pharma Co. Ltd. for the treatment of advanced malignant tumors. SYH-2095 received IND clearance in the U.S. last month.

On the heels of the ouster of Marty Makary as the U.S. FDA commissioner and the serial leadership vacancies at the CDC and the FDA’s drugs and biologics centers, the government’s adherence to science took another blow May 16 when Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., lost the Louisiana primary, ending his bid for re-election.

It looks like the end of the road for many of the court challenges to the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) provision requiring Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices. The U.S. Supreme Court denied cert May 18 to petitions brought by six biopharma companies that raised questions about the constitutionality of the negotiations. All but one of the suits involved were denied in the Third Circuit; the other one was denied in the Second Circuit, so there is no circuit split – yet.

Patients on antihypertensive medications who still struggle with high blood pressure now have a new treatment option, following the U.S. FDA’s approval of Astrazeneca plc’s baxdrostat. Branded Baxfendy, the drug is a first-in-class aldosterone synthase inhibitor, though it could be joined soon by potential competitor Mineralys Therapeutics Inc., which has a December 2026 PDUFA date for its aldosterone synthase inhibitor, lorundrostat.

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has received IND clearance from the FDA to initiate a phase I trial of a novel CAR T-cell therapy, JV-394, for patients with relapsed or refractory CD94-positive T/natural killer (NK) cell lymphomas.

Temperature matters when determining pH levels. Whether that level should be measured at a standard room temperature or refrigerated matters even more, at least in Actelion Ltd.’s infringement litigation against Mylan Inc. According to Johnson & Johnson’s Actelion, the pH level in epoprostenol, the key ingredient in its hypertension drug Veletri, should be measured at a refrigerated temperature when it comes to Mylan’s generic formulation.