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JPM
With the biopharma industry performing better of late, analysts, executives and other industry watchers are “cautiously optimistic”—a term heard all over the streets of San Francisco at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference earlier this month.
Bristol Myers Squibb, GSK and Merck are contributing drug ingredients as part of their deals with the White House but are keeping many of the terms of their agreements private.
Some 200 rare disease therapies are at risk of losing eligibility for a pediatric priority review voucher, a recent analysis by the Rare Disease Company Coalition shows. That could mean $4 billion in missed revenue for already cash-strapped biotechs.
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The FDA’s rare pediatric disease priority review voucher program missed reauthorization at the last minute in 2024; advocates have been fighting to get it back ever since.
THE LATEST
Lilly’s tirzepatide achieved an absence of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis without the worsening of fibrosis in more than 50% of patients in a mid-stage study, the company reported Saturday.
While a prolonged, 15-day regimen of Paxlovid is safe, it appears to be ineffective at lowering the symptoms of long COVID, according to results of a Phase II trial funded by Pfizer and conducted by Stanford Medicine.
FDA
The FDA on Friday approved GSK’s application to use Arexvy to vaccinate adults aged 50 to 59 years who are at increased risk of developing severe respiratory syncytial virus.
Biomea Fusion’s early-stage investigational diabetes treatment BMF-291 has been slapped with a full FDA clinical hold on its Phase I/II trials due to concerns over liver toxicity.
FDA
Approved for patients with low- to intermediate-risk myelodysplastic syndromes, Geron’s Rytelo is the first telomerase inhibitor to hit the market and the company’s first approved drug after 34 years in business.
The companies announced Friday that their candidate survodutide, which is licensed to Boehringer Ingelheim from Zealand Pharma, improved fibrosis in more than 50% of treated patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis.
After rejecting a previous takeover offer from Future Pak, Vanda Pharmaceuticals is now fielding another acquisition proposal from Cycle Pharmaceuticals, which values the biotech at $8 per share.
AbbVie’s antibody-drug conjugate Elahere, developed by ImmunoGen, elicited a nearly 52% objective response rate in heavily pretreated patients with folate receptor-alpha-positive, platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer.
In advance of an advisory committee meeting on Monday, the FDA’s internal reviewers have raised issues regarding Eli Lilly’s Alzheimer’s disease candidate donanemab, flagging problems with its study design and safety outcomes.
Both Eli Lilly and the partnered companies Boehringer Ingelheim and Zealand Pharma have mid-stage data readouts this week, fueling the race in metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis.