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Speaking to media on Tuesday, BIO CEO John Crowley complimented China’s rise as a biotech powerhouse but said U.S. policy needs to protect and maintain America’s lead.
While merger and acquisition activity has been robust of late, frequent changes in guidance and leadership at the regulator add risk to any transaction.
With drug pricing now embedded in U.S. policy, business development teams in biotech and pharma are changing the way they strike deals, including acknowledging policy uncertainties with renegotiation clauses.
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THE LATEST
CDC
One of the two new members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices questioned the safety of COVID-19 vaccines before the Texas Senate in 2021.
A combination of Merck’s Keytruda and Pfizer’s Padcev could offer a chemotherapy-free treatment alternative for patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer, even those eligible for cisplatin treatment.
On the FDA’s docket this month are two decisions pushed back from 2025, including one for a rare form of obesity and another for dry eye disease.
The CDC’s changes threaten to cut vaccine sales for makers including Pfizer, Moderna, Merck and more, but a legal expert suspects affected manufacturers will stay on the sidelines rather than back a push to declare the revised schedule unlawful.
This week’s Capitol Hill meetings come on the heels of rejections of ultra-rare disease drugs developed by Biohaven and Saol Therapeutics. Physicians and patient groups implored the FDA to expedite these treatments.
FDA
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary presented a new idea to staff this week: bonus payments for employees that complete regulatory review processes faster than expected.
Hernexeos is the second drug to secure an FDA approval under the agency’s priority voucher scheme, following in the footsteps of USAntibiotics’ Augmentin XR, which was granted the ticket in December 2025.
FDA
Aside from creating a toxic work environment, CBER Director Vinay Prasad has also been accused of berating his staff and retaliating against reviewers who questioned his decisions.
Without naming a specific product, Commissioner Marty Makary referred to an investigational therapy, delivered surgically into the brain, that the FDA was “pressured” to approve even after finding no clinical benefit to patients.
The BioSpace team hit the ground running at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference earlier this month to bring you the news from the streets of San Francisco.