The FTC has set­tled with Ex­press Scripts over its use of in­sulin re­bates, se­cur­ing an agree­ment that stretch­es across al­most every cor­ner of the com­pa­ny's busi­ness mod­el.

The com­mis­sion and Ex­press Scripts an­nounced the set­tle­ment on Wednes­day, al­most a year and a half af­ter the FTC first filed a com­plaint against the com­pa­ny and two oth­er lead­ing phar­ma­cy ben­e­fit man­agers. The law­suit al­leged that the PBM­s' re­bate prac­tices ar­ti­fi­cial­ly in­flat­ed the price of in­sulin.

At the core of the set­tle­ment are re­quire­ments that Ex­press Scripts change how it ac­cepts re­bates from drug man­u­fac­tur­ers and how those sav­ings trick­le down to con­sumers. The FTC says Ex­press Scripts has agreed to base pa­tients' out-of-pock­et costs on a drug’s net price (af­ter a re­bate is fac­tored in) in­stead of its pre-re­bate list price. It al­so agreed to give plan spon­sors the op­tion to switch off re­bate guar­an­tees and spread pric­ing.

Ab­b­Vie says its new­er im­munol­o­gy prod­ucts are mak­ing up for Hu­mi­ra’s loss of patent ex­clu­siv­i­ty.

Com­bined, Skyrizi and Rin­voq have ex­ceed­ed peak Hu­mi­ra sales by more than $4.5 bil­lion, ex­ec­u­tives said Wednes­day on the com­pa­ny’s fourth-quar­ter earn­ings call. Ab­b­Vie CEO Rob Michael said he ex­pects them to be “main dri­vers” of growth in 2026, po­ten­tial­ly gen­er­at­ing more than $31 bil­lion.

In the wake of Hu­mi­ra’s patent cliff, Skyrizi and Rin­voq have tak­en the man­tle as the com­pa­ny’s top sell­ers. Skyrizi put up $5 bil­lion in fourth-quar­ter sales, a 33% growth from the same pe­ri­od last year and slight­ly beat­ing an­a­lysts’ con­sen­sus es­ti­mates. Rin­voq brought in $2.4 bil­lion, a 30% in­crease, though that drug came in be­low an­a­lysts’ fore­casts by about $20 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to a re­port from Leerink.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Tues­day signed the gov­ern­ment fund­ing ex­ten­sion that al­so reau­tho­rized the FDA's abil­i­ty to is­sue rare pe­di­atric pri­or­i­ty re­views through 2029, re­viv­ing an in­cen­tive pro­gram that in­dus­try has fought to keep.

The pro­gram ex­pired in late 2024 af­ter pro­vid­ing trans­fer­able vouch­ers for a dozen years to com­pa­nies that won ap­proval for drugs to treat rare pe­di­atric ill­ness­es, in­clud­ing cer­tain can­cers and ge­net­ic dis­eases. The vouch­ers can be used to speed ap­proval of a fu­ture drug, and can al­so be sold. In re­cent years, they’ve of­ten gone for more than $100 mil­lion each.

The reau­tho­riza­tion has lin­gered for more than a year, but the FDA has con­tin­ued to award PRVs that had al­ready re­ceived rare pe­di­atric des­ig­na­tions pri­or to the pro­gram's sun­set­ting in De­cem­ber 2024. The FDA is­sued at least three PRVs last year.

Hims & Hers is bring­ing Grail's can­cer test to its con­sumer health plat­form, mark­ing a sig­nif­i­cant step to­ward mass adop­tion of a tech­nol­o­gy that's shown progress while re­main­ing un­der sci­en­tif­ic de­bate.

Grail, a pi­o­neer in a field that screens for dozens of can­cers in a blood sam­ple, has sold 475,000 tests since 2021. The deal will put the test in front of a large au­di­ence that in­cludes two and a half mil­lion sub­scribers, as part of Him­s' ex­pan­sion in­to pre­ven­ta­tive lab test­ing — well be­yond just the treat­ments for hair growth, weight loss and sex­u­al health that made it fa­mous.

In an in­ter­view with End­points News, Grail pres­i­dent Joshua Of­man framed the di­rect-to-con­sumer chan­nel as an im­por­tant piece of the com­pa­ny's strat­e­gy. As an­oth­er pil­lar, Grail last week filed for FDA ap­proval of its test, which if grant­ed would open the door to in­sur­ance and Medicare cov­er­age.