FDA Com­mis­sion­er Mar­ty Makary un­veiled the first nine com­pa­nies to win his new Na­tion­al Pri­or­i­ty Vouch­ers, a big­ger co­hort than orig­i­nal­ly planned as part of the agency’s ef­fort to sig­nif­i­cant­ly cut some drug re­view times.

The vouch­er pro­gram aims to re­view se­lect­ed drugs in as lit­tle as one month af­ter sub­mis­sion, in­stead of the typ­i­cal 10 to 12-month time­line. When it was first an­nounced in June, the FDA said up to five com­pa­nies would par­tic­i­pate in the first year, ac­cord­ing to a web­page screen­shot from Ju­ly.

That lan­guage has since been re­moved from the FDA’s site. Makary has vowed to re­lease even more vouch­ers in the com­ing weeks, align­ing with Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s pri­or­i­ties for low­er­ing drug prices and in­creas­ing US man­u­fac­tur­ing.

The FDA's drug and bi­o­log­ics cen­ters saw near­ly 1,000 net de­par­tures in the last quar­ter of fis­cal 2025, the lat­est agency hir­ing da­ta show, re­veal­ing his­toric loss­es that over­shad­ow hun­dreds of added staff in re­cent years.

Nei­ther cen­ter has ever record­ed net loss­es at fis­cal 2025 lev­els, and no quar­ter has been as low as the fourth quar­ter of this year. CDER lost 746 staffers (and gained six) — al­most three times as many loss­es as the third quar­ter — while CBER lost 194 em­ploy­ees (and gained four), ac­cord­ing to FDA da­ta up­dat­ed last week.

The FDA ex­o­dus in­cludes se­nior lead­er­ship, even as some teams were re­in­stat­ed fol­low­ing the April re­duc­tion in force (RIF) across the agency. It re­mains un­clear how these loss­es will af­fect the agen­cy's drug and bi­o­log­ic re­views or oth­er work, which have so far main­tained pace with years past. And it's un­clear if the lat­est da­ta re­leased by the FDA in­clude the more than 3,000 FDA staff cut by the RIF.

Pfiz­er CEO Al­bert Bourla called Chi­na's bio­phar­ma ecosys­tem "re­mark­able," telling CN­BC's In­vest in Amer­i­ca fo­rum on Wednes­day that the US should fo­cus less on slow­ing down Chi­na and more on how to adapt to the new com­pe­ti­tion.

"They have done a tremen­dous job, not on­ly in in­vest­ing a lot, but in reg­u­la­to­ry changes, IP pro­tec­tions, fund­ing their na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions, cre­at­ing phe­nom­e­nal uni­ver­si­ties," Bourla said of Chi­na, not­ing more patents were filed there than in the US last year.

To get ahead, the US needs "reg­u­la­to­ry changes, sta­bil­i­ty," Bourla said. "Tar­iffs and pric­ing were not help­ing," he added, re­fer­ring to the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion's trade and drug cost pro­grams. Pfiz­er struck a deal with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion last month as part of the White House­'s "most fa­vored na­tion" pric­ing push.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump an­nounced a sweep­ing new ef­fort to broad­en IVF ac­cess by se­cur­ing “mas­sive dis­counts” on fer­til­i­ty drugs from EMD Serono, the lat­est deal in the White House­'s "most fa­vored na­tion" drug pric­ing push.

The an­nounce­ment Thurs­day at the White House al­so came with a brief up­date on how the ad­min­is­tra­tion plans to ne­go­ti­ate dis­counts for GLP-1 weight loss drugs, as well as the roll­out of the FDA's new pri­or­i­ty re­view vouch­ers that could pro­vide an even faster path­way for com­pa­nies to get prod­ucts as­sessed.

The IVF an­nounce­ment was the most sig­nif­i­cant ef­fort by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion to make good on a cam­paign pledge to widen ac­cess to fer­til­i­ty treat­ments, but falls short of Trump’s pre­vi­ous goal to make the treat­ments free.

Bil­lion­aire en­tre­pre­neur Mark Cuban and his heav­i­ly dis­count­ed, most­ly gener­ic drug on­line phar­ma­cy will link up with Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump's in­com­ing on­line mar­ket­place TrumpRx, aim­ing to con­nect more pa­tients with bet­ter drug prices.

Cuban an­nounced the part­ner­ship on Sun­day at the HLTH con­fer­ence in Las Ve­gas, and called on the ad­min­is­tra­tion to go fur­ther on drug pric­ing re­form, par­tic­u­lar­ly around phar­ma­cy ben­e­fit man­agers.

"If you pull out the mon­ey go­ing to PBMs and their ver­ti­cal­ly in­te­grat­ed in­sur­ance com­pa­nies, then our price right now would be al­most as low, if not low­er, than the MFN prices that they're look­ing to do," Cuban told CN­BC.

The Trump-Cuban part­ner­ship fol­lows pledges from Pfiz­er, Am­gen and