Acadia Pharma’s Catherine Owen Adams has formed a group of small- to mid-cap biotechs to advocate against a ‘peanut butter blanket’ approach to drug pricing for small companies.
After a year of watching major pharma companies in the Trump administration’s hot seat for drug pricing, Acadia Pharmaceuticals CEO Catherine Owen Adams isn’t taking any chances.
The CEO has formed a lobbying group with her peers to seek carve-outs to any proposed Most Favored Nation drug pricing–style policy that could emerge. That hasn’t happened yet, and the Trump administration has not indicated an interest in imposing the policy on any companies beyond the 17 Big Pharmas that received letters in July.
“I don’t think the administration is out to target small pharma or small biotech particularly. And what we’re trying to do is make sure that they understand that a peanut butter blanket approach to MFN probably would not be the best for U.S. innovation,” Owen Adams said in an interview on the sidelines of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco on Monday.
It’s not just Owen Adams and her immediate peers that are raising concerns about small- to mid-cap biotechs. Greg Graves, a senior partner in McKinsey’s life sciences practice, recently told BioSpace that MFN drug pricing will be a big risk for these companies in 2026.
So Owen Adams and her peers are getting ahead of the matter.
“There’s a group of about 10 of us who are looking to specifically help the administration understand that if you disrupt small biotech innovation in the U.S. by putting MFN around us in terms of constraints, then you’re really suffocating U.S. innovation,” Owen Adams said.
Owen Adams is also involved in other policy and advocacy groups with the same mission, including at BIO. The goal is to ensure that if such a policy is imposed, small biotechs—particularly those, like Acadia, working on rare disease—are exempted. The Inflation Reduction Act included these kinds of carve-outs, Owen Adams noted.
“We’re continuing to be the voice of small biotech,” Owen Adams said. “It’s really important that they don’t lump us in with the large pharma companies who have the ability to make different choices. They have much larger portfolios in which to weigh their decisions than us.”
The matter is particularly critical for Acadia, which is expecting a decision for Rett syndrome therapy Daybue in Europe by the end of the first quarter. Any disruption to pricing in the U.S. could impact those same conversations across the pond, Owen Adams explained.
“If I can’t launch Daybue in Europe because of MFN, it’s a big, big impact on Acadia,” she said. The company still intends to go ahead with that launch, Owen Adams stressed. It’s one of the key milestones she expects for Acadia in a catalyst-rich year.
As Big Pharmas came under President Donald Trump’s microscope, CEOs such as AstraZeneca’s Pascal Soriot began to shift the narrative to suggest that other nations needed to pay more to cover innovation, rather than just dropping prices in the U.S. While the U.K. has agreed to adjust its reimbursement rate, there has been no such decision for the EU at this point.
Owen Adams is skeptical that European nations are going to suddenly agree to pay more for their medicines.
“I think it’s a nice try, but I’m not sure Europe’s ready to raise their prices just because of the situation or the direction from the U.S.,” she said.
The changes in the U.K. were welcome though, Owen Adams said, as country had not changed its reimbursement level in nearly 30 years. “It’s been a while, so their commitment to increase the NICE [National Institute for Health and Care Excellence] reimbursement levels is definitely positive.”
Despite her planning, Owen Adams said that she has not gotten a sense that the Trump administration is working on policy that would impose MFN on smaller companies. In fact, she believes Trump and his team are “keen on U.S. innovation and ensuring that the biotech industry thrives here and has a good foothold.”
Part of the conversation with Trump administration officials has been pointing out that China is ready to step up if the U.S. biotech industry is hamstrung.
“If we don’t have that innovation here, China’s going to move into the space real quick. And we’ve been very specific about how we talk about that and giving illustrative examples,” Owen Adams said.
“I’m hoping that the voice of smaller [and] middle-sized pharma is heard.”
