Astellas pulls lawsuit over price negotiations as Xtandi sidesteps first list of 10 drugs

Astel­las on Wednes­day vol­un­tar­i­ly dis­missed its law­suit against the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion’s HHS af­ter its prostate can­cer drug Xtan­di (en­za­lu­tamide) was not in­clud­ed in the ini­tial list of drugs that will face price ne­go­ti­a­tions in 2026.

Astel­las said in a state­ment on Wednes­day af­ter­noon:

[The de­ci­sion] does not change our fun­da­men­tal be­lief that in its cur­rent form, the Medicare Drug Price Ne­go­ti­a­tion Pro­gram (Pro­gram) cre­at­ed by the IRA is bad pol­i­cy and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al. The price-set­ting poli­cies in the Pro­gram will dis­rupt the com­pet­i­tive mar­ket­place for pre­scrip­tion drugs in the U.S., dis­in­cen­tivize crit­i­cal re­search and de­vel­op­ment ef­forts for hard-to-treat con­di­tions, and di­min­ish the avail­abil­i­ty of new med­i­cines for pa­tients.

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