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The FDA has gained a reputation during the past year for being inconsistently flexible, particularly when it comes to rare diseases. Executives at Rezolute and CERo Therapeutics recently had positive interactions with the agency, in which they told BioSpace reviewers have been “collaborative” and “curious.
FDA
Since the FDA began publishing its rejections of drug approval filings in July last year, companies have become more forthcoming about the details of agency decisions in their own disclosures, according to biopharma and regulatory analysts.
Novo Nordisk’s oral Wegovy has a few months’ head start on Eli Lilly’s newly approved pill. While the Indianapolis pharma has come from behind the Danish rival in the weight loss space before, last time it clearly had the better drug.
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As Big Pharma companies consider foregoing European drug launches to avoid reducing drug prices in the U.S. in alignment with Trump’s Most Favored Nation policy, patients will suffer.
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Anthropic in October last year iterated its Claude AI model to better cater to biopharma purposes. Sanofi, Novo Nordisk, AbbVie and others already use Claude in their operations.
Takeda and Denali Therapeutics first partnered in early 2018 to advance drugs for neurodegenerative diseases. One asset, for Alzheimer’s disease, was previously discontinued after an FDA hold and disappointing early data.
The upcoming FDA decision for Replimune’s advanced melanoma drug could be a litmus test for the agency’s future regulatory decision-making, analysts say, with implications stretching well beyond one company.
FDA
While recent FDA guidance speaks to the agency’s support of innovative trial designs—including the use of external controls—the application of this flexibility appears to be inconsistent. One former regulator says the situation is more nuanced.
Nobel laureate Sir Michael Houghton and colleagues at Applied Pharmaceutical Innovation (API) outline how rigorous early testing, smart IP and regulatory planning, and scalable CMC choices can help founders reach first-in-human faster.
BioNTech envisioned the site making hundreds of millions of vaccines a year, but has since shifted its pipeline to other modalities while mRNA technology continues to face headwinds in the U.S.
While some large companies could start paying the full tariff in 120 days, many products, including orphan drugs, cell and gene therapies, and antibody-drug conjugates, will enjoy exemptions that waive or greatly reduce the levies.
After a flurry of deals over the past week from Eli Lilly, Merck and Biogen, analysts predict more M&A action from other big names, including Novartis, Amgen and AbbVie.
After Eli Lilly achieved the milestone approval of the weight loss pill Foundayo, Novo Nordisk launched a full-court press to defend oral Wegovy, which has been enjoying a record-breaking launch since January.
With CBER director Vinay Prasad set to depart the agency at the end of the month, a coalition of patient groups and biotech executives penned a letter imploring the Trump administration to “restore regulatory clarity” for rare disease therapies. Experts on a BioSpace panel last week also acknowledged the challenges faced by a more stringent FDA.