(Reuters) -Drug manufacturers can limit healthcare providers' use of outside pharmacies for dispensing drugs under a federal drug discount program, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. The ruling from a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in Philadelphia is a victory for Sanofi SA, Novo Nordisk AS and AstraZeneca PLc. The companies had sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) after it ordered them to stop restricting sales of discounted drugs to so-called contract pharmacies.
Investor focus is likely to be on the sales of Merck's (MRK) blockbuster oncology medicine, Keytruda when the company reports Q4 earnings.
Sanofi (NASDAQ: SNY) and AstraZeneca's (NASDAQ: AZN) application for the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine candidate called nirsevimab was recently accepted for review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a protective option for all infants. Nirsevimab is known by the trade name Beyfortus in the European Union and the United Kingdom, and the FDA expects to make an approval decision on the RSV vaccine in the third quarter of this year.