Aleth LifeSci Brief: 18-22 Aug 2025
US and EU cap pharma tariffs at 15%
ALETH / LIFESCI-BRIEF / 2025-08-22 / US AND EU CAP PHARMA TARIFFS AT 15%In this edition
Monday: NHS weight-loss apps; US NIH research review; Wegovy wins MASH
Wednesday: Viking’s obesity pill; US pediatricians break with RFK
Friday: US-EU pharma tariff cap; Streeting’s UK pricing ultimatum
Monday 18 August
The NHS will pay makers of weight-loss apps by results, tying their fees to whether patients stay the course and lose weight, under a deal The Times valued at up to £383m.
The Times reported that providers of diet and exercise apps would be paid according to how many patients stick with their regime and how much weight they lose after a year, rather than a flat fee per user. Ministers want the same outcome-based model carried across to the weight-loss drugs themselves, where the NHS pays whether or not a patient keeps the weight off. The £383m figure and the pay-by-results structure come from the Times report; no NHS England or Department of Health and Social Care announcement carrying them could be found.
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The NIH told its scientific leadership to review every current and planned research activity for alignment with agency priorities, warning that work which does not fit may be paused or cut.
In a director’s statement on 15 August, Jay Bhattacharya set out a “unified strategy” tying NIH funding to a new priority list: replication studies, alternative testing models, a real-world-data resource, artificial intelligence in research, and a sharper focus on chronic disease and nutrition. A parallel internal directive, reported by FierceBiotech, told leadership to review the whole portfolio at once and said activities that do not align “may be restricted, paused, not renewed or terminated,” with staff “encouraged to renegotiate” to comply. The instruction puts a wide swathe of federally funded biomedical research under near-term review at the world’s largest public funder of it.
Sources:
Advancing NIH’s Mission Through a Unified Strategy - National Institutes of Health
NIH chief calls for immediate research review, dangling threat of project termination - FierceBiotech
Novo Nordisk won US approval for Wegovy in the liver disease MASH, the drug’s third indication and the first for a GLP-1 medicine in the condition.
On 15 August the FDA granted accelerated approval of semaglutide 2.4 mg, sold as Wegovy, for noncirrhotic metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis in adults with moderate to advanced liver fibrosis, alongside diet and exercise. Approval rested on part 1 of the ESSENCE trial, where 36.8% of patients on Wegovy saw liver fibrosis improve without their steatohepatitis worsening, against 22.4% on placebo at 72 weeks. MASH has few approved treatments, and the clearance takes semaglutide beyond obesity and cardiovascular risk into a disease Eli Lilly is also chasing. A second part of ESSENCE continues to 240 weeks to test whether the drug cuts liver-related clinical events, the confirmatory step accelerated approval depends on.
Sources:
Wegovy approved in the US for the treatment of MASH - Novo Nordisk
Tuesday 19 August
Novo Nordisk halved the cash price of Ozempic for uninsured US patients to $499 a month and, for the first time, offered the drug by home delivery.
The 18 August offer lets eligible self-paying adults with type 2 diabetes buy authentic Ozempic for $499, about half the roughly $1,000-plus monthly list price, through NovoCare Pharmacy, the drug’s own websites and GoodRx at more than 70,000 pharmacies. Home delivery through NovoCare Pharmacy is new for Ozempic. Novo pitched the move as steering patients away from unapproved compounded copies, and it lands as the Trump administration presses drugmakers to cut US prices and sell more directly to patients.
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CSL will cut up to 3,000 jobs and spin off its Seqirus vaccine arm, and its shares fell on the news.
Announced with full-year results on 19 August, the restructuring removes up to 15% of CSL’s workforce and targets as much as US$550m in savings to redirect into higher-priority work. The Australian plasma group will demerge Seqirus, one of the world’s largest flu vaccine makers, as a separately listed company by around June 2026, with former unit head Gordon Naylor as its chair. Seqirus runs a large influenza-vaccine plant in Liverpool, so the split will change the ownership of a UK production site.
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Wednesday 20 August
Viking Therapeutics’s oral obesity pill delivered 12.2% weight loss in a mid-stage trial, and the shares fell because that trailed the injectables and came with a tolerability problem.
On 19 August Viking said the tablet form of VK2735 cut mean body weight by up to 12.2% from baseline over 13 weeks, up to 10.9% after adjusting for placebo, meeting the trial’s goals with weight loss still falling at the end. The company called the drug safe and well tolerated, with 99% of gastrointestinal side effects mild or moderate.
The market read it differently. FierceBiotech noted the headline figure sits behind what Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have already shown, and that 38% of patients stopped taking the drug at its most effective dose, an awkward result for a pill whose pitch is convenience. The race for an oral weight-loss drug that matches the injections stays open.
Sources:
Viking Therapeutics announces positive top-line results from Phase 2 VENTURE-Oral dosing trial - Viking Therapeutics
Viking hits stormy seas as Phase 2 oral obesity data sink stock - FierceBiotech
The American Academy of Pediatrics broke with the federal government on childhood Covid vaccination, recommending the shot for all children aged six months to two years.
In a policy statement on 19 August, the AAP said children aged six through 23 months face the highest risk of severe Covid and should be vaccinated, with vaccination for ages two to 18 offered on a risk basis or at a parent’s request through shared decision-making. That puts the largest US pediatricians’ body directly against the line set under HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose CDC no longer recommends the shot for healthy children of any age. It is the first substantial split between AAP guidance and federal recommendations in decades, and it deepens the friction between Kennedy’s health department and the medical establishment over vaccines.
Sources:
Recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines in infants, children, and adolescents - American Academy of Pediatrics
Thursday 21 August
Novo Nordisk is preparing layoffs as Wegovy’s growth cools, unwinding a hiring spree that nearly doubled its workforce during the obesity boom.
Reuters reported on 21 August that the Danish drugmaker, which added staff at pace over five years to expand manufacturing and sales for its weight-loss blockbuster, is now cutting back as US prescriptions stall and competition from Eli Lilly and compounded copies bites. The report is Reuters’s own; Novo had not confirmed numbers or announced the cuts when it ran. It came the same week Novo halved Ozempic’s US cash price, and weeks after the company lowered its 2025 sales and profit forecasts and installed a new chief executive.
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More than 750 current and former federal health workers signed an open letter blaming Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for a “deliberate destruction” of trust and for endangering CDC staff.
Published on 20 August after the 8 August shooting at CDC headquarters in Atlanta, the letter calls Kennedy “complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information,” and says his “dangerous and deceitful” statements have fed the harassment and violence directed at CDC staff. The signatories, noting the attack “was not random,” gave him until 2 September to stop spreading inaccurate health information, affirm the CDC’s scientific integrity and guarantee employees’ safety. It landed the same week hundreds of CDC staff received final termination notices.
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Friday 22 August
The US and EU fixed a 15% ceiling on tariffs for EU-origin pharmaceuticals entering America, giving European drugmakers a firm number to plan around.
A joint statement on 21 August, filling in the framework struck in late July, commits that the combined most-favoured-nation and Section 232 tariff on EU pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and lumber will not exceed 15%, whatever rate the Section 232 investigation into pharmaceuticals eventually sets. More broadly the US will charge EU goods the higher of its MFN rate or 15%. From 1 September the US will apply only the MFN rate, effectively near zero, to EU generic medicines and their ingredients and precursors. The pharmaceutical cap takes effect once that Section 232 investigation concludes.
Sources:
Joint statement on a United States-European Union framework on an agreement on reciprocal, fair, and balanced trade - The White House
Wes Streeting gave pharmaceutical companies until noon to accept the government’s latest drug-pricing offer, threatening to declare the talks over if they refused.
The Financial Times reported that the Health Secretary issued the ultimatum privately on 22 August, setting a 12pm deadline and saying he would end the negotiations in public if it passed without a deal. The talks set the rebate the industry pays the NHS on branded-medicine sales and have run for months, against a steady drumbeat of complaints, from AstraZeneca and others, that Britain underpays for new medicines. The deadline and the threat come from the FT’s reporting; the government issued no public statement setting them out.
Sources:
Streeting gives drugmakers deadline to accept UK pricing offer - Financial Times
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