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FDA
Last week, the FDA made its one pivotal trial policy official, sparking myriad questions from industry leaders, including around specific evidence required for the single study and why it hasn’t been implemented across all therapeutic areas before now.
FEATURED STORIES
Alternatives to opioids are desperately needed to better treat moderate to severe acute pain, but to date, we’ve seen few novel analgesics hit the market.
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.
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Read our takes on the biggest stories happening in the industry.
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.
THE LATEST
KER-0193 is a modulator of ion channels connected to autism spectrum disorder. The FDA bestowed orphan drug and rare pediatric drug designations on the candidate earlier this year.
According to analysts, the new data could present a path to accelerated approval for ifinatamab deruxtecan, a product of Merck and Daiichi Sankyo’s troubled ADC partnership.
The World Health Organization’s Essential Medicines list guides high-level procurement and coverage decisions for over 150 countries.
FDA
New FDA expert panels, such as recent meetings on SSRI use during pregnancy and on hormone replacement therapy during menopause, are drawing criticism for being one-sided. One leader says such panels are designed to reach a specific conclusion.
FDA
Amid an unprecedented turnover in leadership at the FDA and mass layoffs of staff, communication has crumbled and uncertainty runs rampant, leaving small and medium biopharma companies without a clear path forward for their therapies.
Rick Doblin, the founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which founded Lykos, bemoaned a “moving of the goal posts” in Lykos’ rejection but looked for positives in the newly released complete response letter.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeated a series of anti-vaccine talking points during his appearance in front of the Senate finance committee on Thursday, as Democratic and Republican senators alike hammered the Health Secretary on recent COVID-19 vaccine restrictions and his views on Operation Warp Speed.
Ousted CDC Director Susan Monarez claimed in an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal Thursday that she was fired for refusing to rubber-stamp COVID-19 recommendations to be made by an advisory panel that has expressed “antivaccine rhetoric.”
Despite hitting its efficacy targets in the Phase III COAST-1 study, Sanofi’s amlitelimab remains “meaningfully inferior” to Dupixent, according to analysts at Leerink Partners.
Hengrui Pharmaceuticals has been busy this year, signing a nearly $2 billion cardio contract with Merck in March and a 12-asset agreement with GSK in July worth up to $12 billion.