As the White House con­tin­ues to roll out “most fa­vored na­tion” deals with drug­mak­ers, con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ing ex­ecs don’t an­tic­i­pate any pric­ing pres­sure to im­pact their busi­ness­es — for now.

End­points News spoke with ex­ec­u­tives from man­u­fac­tur­ers, in­clud­ing Ther­mo Fish­er, Fu­ji­film, Re­ci­pharm and Siegfried, on the side­lines of the Con­ven­tion on Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal In­gre­di­ents con­fab in Frank­furt. They all said they’ve seen no im­pact yet from Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s push to bring US drug prices in line with cheap­er rates paid abroad.

“ is en­tire­ly on the phar­ma com­pa­nies that have to man­age those pric­ing as­pects,” said Anil Kane, Ther­mo Fish­er’s glob­al head of tech­ni­cal and sci­en­tif­ic af­fairs.

LON­DON — WuXi AppTec is cre­at­ing its first Eu­ro­pean head­quar­ters at its ex­ist­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Ger­many, the com­pa­ny’s US and EU pres­i­dent Rick Con­nell said Wednes­day.

“The time is right now to put the flag down and say, we're here. We're here to stay,” Con­nell said dur­ing the Fi­nan­cial Times’ Glob­al Phar­ma and Biotech Sum­mit in Lon­don.

The new head­quar­ters will be lo­cat­ed at the com­pa­ny’s site in Mu­nich, which is home to its drug dis­cov­ery ser­vice sub­sidiary called Cre­lux. WuXi AppTec al­so has a sec­ond Eu­ro­pean site in Cou­vet, Switzer­land, which pro­vides ser­vices in oral sol­id dose man­u­fac­tur­ing.

“While we have big op­er­a­tions in Asia and big op­er­a­tions in the US, we've on­ly had these two sites in Eu­rope, yet we have sev­er­al hun­dred cus­tomers here in Eu­rope,” Con­nell added.

Abeona Ther­a­peu­tics said the com­mer­cial roll­out of its rare skin dis­ease cell ther­a­py has hit a road­bump, de­lay­ing the treat­ment of its first pa­tient by sev­er­al months.

Al­though the com­pa­ny not­ed on Wednes­day morn­ing that there is high pa­tient de­mand for its prod­uct, caus­ing its stock ABEO to ral­ly by as much as 18% at mar­ket close that day. Zevaskyn, ap­proved in April, has a $3.1 mil­lion price tag and is among the most ex­pen­sive ther­a­pies world­wide.

Zevaskyn is for chil­dren and adults with re­ces­sive dy­s­troph­ic epi­der­mol­y­sis bul­losa, a rare, ge­net­ic skin dis­ease in which pa­tients are sen­si­tive to blis­ters and wounds. Af­ter a biop­sy of the pa­tien­t's own skin cells, sheets of skin with func­tion­al ver­sions of col­la­gen are made and then ap­plied to the pa­tient dur­ing surgery.

Mer­ck KGaA is still in ne­go­ti­a­tions with the White House to de­ter­mine how much its drug prod­ucts will be ex­empt from Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s up­com­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal tar­iffs, CFO He­lene von Roed­er said.

"It's a lit­tle bit ear­ly to give you ex­act guid­ance on how we're look­ing at it,” von Roed­er said dur­ing its third-quar­ter earn­ings call with the me­dia on Thurs­day.

The com­pa­ny’s North Amer­i­can arm EMD Serono an­nounced the deal in a splashy event at the White House last month. It agreed to low­er prices of its IVF treat­ments and use "most fa­vored na­tion" pric­ing for fu­ture drugs, in ex­change for its prod­ucts and in­gre­di­ents to be ex­empt from the De­part­ment of Com­merce's Sec­tion 232 phar­ma in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Catal­ent will let go of more gene ther­a­py staff in Mary­land over con­tin­ued is­sues in de­mand from a "large com­mer­cial cus­tomer," a com­pa­ny spokesper­son told End­points News.

A to­tal of 77 work­ers will be laid off in the state, in­clud­ing 14 em­ploy­ees from Catal­ent’s gene ther­a­py fac­to­ry in Bal­ti­more at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land BioPark, ac­cord­ing to a WARN no­tice pub­lished on Nov. 6. The lay­offs will take ef­fect Jan. 5.

In Au­gust, Catal­ent cut its head­count by 350 work­ers at the Bal­ti­more fac­to­ry over an "un­ex­pect­ed shift in de­mand" from an un­known cus­tomer. Catal­ent de­clined to name the com­pa­ny in ques­tion, but one of its large cus­tomers there is Sarep­ta Ther­a­peu­tics. Sarep­ta has faced a re­cent drop in de­mand for its Duchenne gene ther­a­py Ele­v­idys due to dis­clo­sures of pa­tient deaths and paused ship­ments.

LON­DON — Chi­na’s biotech sec­tor is steadi­ly mov­ing be­yond a “me-too” ap­proach to drug de­vel­op­ment thanks to a surge in qual­i­ty tal­ent, reg­u­la­to­ry flex­i­bil­i­ty and