President Donald Trump’s Most Favored Nation drug pricing policy is prompting biopharma dealmakers to reconsider their strategies, according to experts at the opening day of the BIO 2026 Convention in San Diego on June 23. The policy requires companies to price drugs in the United States on par with other high-income nations, leading industry leaders to seek more flexibility and higher prices in negotiations.
Deepa Talpade, head of business development and licensing at Bayer, discussed a possible approach: “You might just take Germany and U.K., and leave everything else out. It’s pretty drastic, and you set a higher price for that.” Talpade said this strategy is being considered because maintaining “premium pricing” in the U.S. may require companies to forgo launching drugs in other countries.
Anamaria Sudarov, managing director for the healthcare investment banking division of Wells Fargo, said that instead of sequentially rolling out drugs first in the U.S. and then globally, companies are now focusing primarily on America due to its market size. Companies such as Bayer and United Therapeutics have indicated they may skip certain European markets as a result.
Talpade explained how these changes affect collaboration or merger-and-acquisition deals: “You basically need the freedom and flexibility to give up ex-U.S.. It isn’t anybody’s dream—by the way—because access and patient service is the whole point of this industry, right? So it’s not something we’re enjoying, but you need the flexibility in that contract.” She added that previous models allowing biotech firms to sign off ex-U.S. rights no longer work under an MFN regime: “Why would you risk a different pricing team acting on your behalf in Europe? You, as a biotech that wants to grow, will be challenged by saying we’ll keep the U.S. market and somebody else will make money for us ex-U.S.”
Chad Diehl, legal team lead for licensing and acquisitions at Astellas Pharma, said uncertainty around MFN risk complicates financial evaluations during negotiations: “We have to factor [policy risk] in when we’re presenting to management, but because it’s an unknown, it’s not flowing through to the financial evaluations that’s on paper.” Casarine Chong, general counsel for R&D and business development at CSL, said renegotiation clauses are increasingly being considered despite resistance from legal counsel: “Everyone thinks it’s a dirty word. I don’t think it is. You can either wait for the renegotiation to occur organically or you can bake it into the agreement.”
Diehl noted if renegotiation fails as an option, litigation could follow; his company has begun including arbitration clauses early on—a practice he called another "dirty word"—to address future uncertainties.
