With the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion's planned phar­ma tar­iffs on the hori­zon, Pfiz­er CEO Al­bert Bourla gave an op­ti­mistic read on Tues­day when asked how he thought the trade levies might be im­ple­ment­ed.

Speak­ing dur­ing the com­pa­ny's quar­ter­ly earn­ings call, Bourla said he was “cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic” that any find­ings from the White House’s on­go­ing Sec­tion 232 in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts would fo­cus on im­ports from coun­tries that are an ac­tu­al na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty risk, as op­posed to al­lies. His read comes from con­ver­sa­tions with the White House and as­so­ci­at­ed staff, he told in­vestors.

“There is a very clear dis­tinc­tion in the way that they look at it, in terms of what prod­ucts they are talk­ing about. And there is a very clear dis­tinc­tion as to what comes from friend­ly coun­tries or what comes from ad­ver­sary coun­tries,” Bourla said.

The FDA plans to con­sol­i­date some ad­min­is­tra­tive func­tions, but won't em­bark on a whole­sale re­or­ga­ni­za­tion of the re­view cen­ters that over­see drugs, bi­o­log­ics and med­ical de­vices, FDA Com­mis­sion­er Mar­ty Makary said in an in­ter­view pub­lished Tues­day.

"Yes, we are con­sol­i­dat­ing trav­el of­fices, IT, and some oth­er things that make sense for ef­fi­cien­cy, but noth­ing else is planned," Makary told Har­vard physi­cian Je­re­my Faust in an in­ter­view.

The agency and HHS had pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered the idea of re­or­ga­niz­ing the agency in­to five shared ser­vices of­fices. The pro­pos­al, first re­port­ed by End­points News, fol­lowed sweep­ing job cuts tar­get­ing about 3,500 FDA em­ploy­ees. The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, in many cas­es led by Elon Musk's DOGE ini­tia­tive, has tar­get­ed sim­i­lar cuts across the gov­ern­ment.

Ar­tios Phar­ma, a start­up de­vel­op­ing drugs that weak­en a tu­mor’s abil­i­ty to main­tain its DNA, an­nounced pos­i­tive re­sults in a sub­set of pa­tients with ad­vanced can­cer. It’s the first big da­ta re­veal for the Cam­bridge, UK-based start­up, which has been rel­a­tive­ly qui­et since 2021, when it struck a drug dis­cov­ery part­ner­ship with No­var­tis and raised $153 mil­lion in Se­ries C fi­nanc­ing.

The com­pa­ny’s drug, called ART0380, in­hibits a DNA re­pair en­zyme called ATR. When ad­min­is­tered with a low dose of the chemother­a­py irinote­can, the drug shrank tu­mors in 37% of pa­tients whose can­cer was con­sid­ered “de­fi­cient” in an­oth­er DNA dam­age re­sponse pro­tein dubbed ATM, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from a Phase 1/2 study.

Mer­ck is shift­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing for its block­buster drug Keytru­da to a new $1 bil­lion fac­to­ry in Delaware, dou­bling down on its plans to move pro­duc­tion to the US to mit­i­gate the im­pact of po­ten­tial phar­ma tar­iffs.

“By pro­duc­ing Keytru­da in the US, as well as nu­mer­ous fu­ture bi­o­log­ic prod­ucts, we are reaf­firm­ing our com­mit­ment to a strong US foot­print that sup­ports the Pres­i­dent’s eco­nom­ic agen­da,” the com­pa­ny said Tues­day.

With the threat of phar­ma-spe­cif­ic tar­iffs on the hori­zon, drug­mak­ers are rush­ing to show they are mov­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing to the US. On Tues­day morn­ing, No­var­tis re­it­er­at­ed it wish­es to have 100% of all its drug pro­duc­tion in the US in the next five years, and As­traZeneca said it's look­ing to shift man­u­fac­tur­ing from Eu­rope in­to the US. Mer­ck said it plans to con­tin­ue re­lo­cat­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions to the US, in­clud­ing Keytru­da pro­duc­tion in 2026.