Three ad­vo­ca­cy groups have writ­ten to the UK’s Com­pe­ti­tion and Mar­kets Au­thor­i­ty (CMA) de­mand­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to whether phar­ma com­pa­nies co­or­di­nat­ed with the US gov­ern­ment and UK trade groups to ex­ert pres­sure and raise drug prices in the coun­try.

The CMA re­ceived the let­ter on Sept. 26 from UK-based pa­tient ad­vo­ca­cy groups Bal­anced Econ­o­my Project, Just Treat­ment and Glob­al Jus­tice Now, which al­leged that com­pa­nies are work­ing with the US ad­min­is­tra­tion and a UK phar­ma trade group, the As­so­ci­a­tion of the British Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal In­dus­try, to pres­sure the UK gov­ern­ment.

Rough­ly a month ago, UK Health Sec­re­tary Wes Street­ing failed to strike a deal on drug pric­ing with phar­ma com­pa­nies, mean­ing the UK’s drug re­bate tax stayed at near­ly 23%. This is very high com­pared to oth­er coun­tries, such as France’s 5.7% tax. Many top drug­mak­ers have since then crit­i­cized the British gov­ern­ment, say­ing it is cre­at­ing a bad busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment.

Cal­i­for­nia-based syn­thet­ic DNA mak­er Ansa Biotech­nolo­gies has closed an over­sub­scribed Se­ries B fund­ing round with $45.2 mil­lion, plus com­mit­ments for an ad­di­tion­al $9.2 mil­lion. The cash will be used to in­crease its US man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty.

“Our as­pi­ra­tion is to be able to syn­the­size every se­quence a cus­tomer sends us, and we're close to be­ing able to do that. We're not there yet, but we can do a hell of a lot more than any­body else,” Ansa CEO Ja­son Gam­mack told End­points News in an in­ter­view.

Ansa plans to use some of the fund­ing to ex­pand its on­ly fa­cil­i­ty, which is in Emeryville, CA, Gam­mack said. The com­pa­ny will in­stall an up­grad­ed ver­sion of its tech­nol­o­gy which will make its DNA man­u­fac­tur­ing more ef­fi­cient, he added. New man­u­fac­tur­ing plat­forms will al­so be added at the Emeryville site to ex­pand pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is start­ing to pre­pare tar­iffs on some phar­ma com­pa­nies, but those levies won’t take ef­fect on Wednes­day, a White House of­fi­cial con­firmed to End­points News.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump an­nounced last Thurs­day in a so­cial me­dia post that be­gin­ning Oct. 1, drug­mak­ers that haven’t start­ed con­struc­tion projects in the US will face 100% tar­iffs on their brand­ed med­i­cines.

But the White House of­fi­cial said Wednes­day that the ad­min­is­tra­tion will on­ly “be­gin prepar­ing tar­iffs” on Oct. 1. The tar­iffs will ap­ply to com­pa­nies that aren’t on­shoring their man­u­fac­tur­ing to the US as well as those that don’t par­tic­i­pate in Trump’s most fa­vored na­tion pol­i­cy, ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cial.

Since Trump’s post last Thurs­day, a hand­ful of drug­mak­ers have start­ed con­struc­tion on US-based projects.

A White House of­fi­cial con­firmed to End­points News that Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s so­cial me­dia post which said he'd put 100% tar­iffs on some brand­ed drugs is a re­sult of the ad­min­is­tra­tion's five-month Sec­tion 232 in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Late Thurs­day, Trump post­ed on Truth So­cial that phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies have six days to break ground on their man­u­fac­tur­ing builds. Oth­er­wise, they will face a 100% levy on brand­ed phar­ma prod­ucts that aren’t made in the US. But Trump's post left plen­ty of room to guess which com­pa­nies and prod­ucts would be af­fect­ed.

Since April, the De­part­ment of Com­merce has been in­ves­ti­gat­ing phar­ma prod­ucts as part of a plan to put tar­iffs on drugs made out­side the US. At one point, com­pa­nies in­di­cat­ed that those tar­iffs might be nar­row and ap­ply on­ly to US ri­vals. At oth­er times, they've been wrapped up in Trump's push to on­shore drug man­u­fac­tur­ing. And as the in­ves­ti­ga­tion has un­fold­ed, large com­pa­nies such as No­vo Nordisk have urged the White House to back off.

Af­ter months of bul­ly­ing, flat­tery and ne­go­ti­a­tions, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump's White House had stitched to­geth­er a se­ries of deals with the phar­ma in­dus­try and for­eign na­tions that would meet sev­er­al of the ad­min­is­tra­tion's key goals.

One af­ter an­oth­er, the biggest drug­mak­ers in the world had pledged bil­lions of dol­lars in new man­u­fac­tur­ing in Amer­i­ca, part of Trump's ef­fort to re­vive the US in­dus­tri­al base. It had a trade deal, too, af­ter Trump shook hands in Ju­ly with Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion Pres­i­dent Ur­su­la von der Leyen, seal­ing an agree­ment to put a flat 15% tar­iff on EU phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal goods.

Then, late on Thurs­day night, Trump threw a grenade in­to the mid­dle of it all.

The White House her­ald­ed its new drug pric­ing agree­ment with Pfiz­er, say­ing it was pri­or­i­tiz­ing fair­ness for Amer­i­can con­sumers and that it would be the first of many deals struck with drug man­u­fac­tur­ers.

But the re­al im­pact of Tues­day’s an­nounce­ment may be lim­it­ed, and how peo­ple ex­pe­ri­ence it will de­pend al­most en­tire­ly on where they sit with­in the com­pli­cat­ed US health­care sys­tem and what med­i­cines they take.

A key part of Tues­day’s an­nounce­ment is a new web­site that will of­fer list-price dis­counts on a di­rect-to-con­sumer plat­form built by the gov­ern­ment, TrumpRx, that Pfiz­er said will in­clude the ma­jor­i­ty of its pri­ma­ry care treat­ments and some spe­cial­ty brand med­i­cines.