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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.
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.
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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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IPO
LB Pharma needed $350 million to advance a promising schizophrenia candidate at a time when the biotech markets were locked up tight. Fortunately, it wasn’t CEO Heather Turner’s first rodeo.
Rare disease drug developers struggle to survive in a biopharma investment market that prioritizes large patient populations. Initiatives like the Orphan Therapeutics Accelerator are attempting to solve what CEO Craig Martin says is not a science problem, but a math problem.
The company plans to divest a drug it has made for 40 years, citing increasing production costs and falling prices.
Following Monday’s clinical defeat by Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk cut the 2027 list prices for its three GLP-1 medicines by as much as 50%, while boasting Phase 2 data for its invesigational triple-G agonist.
Eli Lilly’s win in a head-to-head trial drove Novo Nordisk’s market cap to pre-Wegovy levels not long after the victor became the first pharma company to top a $1 trillion valuation. It seems one company can do no right, while the other can do no wrong.
In August last year, the Health Department cut around $500 million in mRNA research funding, with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. saying the agency would instead divert the money “toward safer, broader vaccine platforms.”
Ecnoglutide, which Pfizer licensed from Sciwind Biosciences, is already approved in China for type 2 diabetes mellitus, and a marketing application for weight loss has been accepted by regulatory authorities in the country.
Following a disappointing Phase 3 performance and given Gossamer Bio’s balance sheet, seralutinib’s path to the market for pulmonary arterial hypertension has become unclear, according to analysts at Guggenheim Partners.
In a Phase 1 study, 82% of patients on VIR-5500 achieved at least a 50% reduction in PSA levels—a result analysts praised as competitive in the prostate cancer space.
Part of AbbVie’s vow to invest $100 billion in the U.S. over the next decade, the two Illinois facilities will make active ingredients for next-generation neuroscience and obesity drugs when they start operations in 2029.