A more than 20-year uneasy biopharma romance between two Swiss giants will be ending as Novartis AG plans to sell its stake in Roche Holding AG back to Roche for about $20.7 billion. Roche described it as a “disentanglement of the two competitors” that will allow it to regain “full strategic flexibility.” Basel, Switzerland-based Novartis currently owns about one-third of Roche, whose shareholders get the final say-so when they vote yea or nay at the company’s Nov. 26 extraordinary general meeting. Novartis was very clear about how it views its stake in Roche, as the company said it “does not consider the financial investment in Roche as part of its core business and therefore not a strategic asset” and that it’s time to “monetize our investment.”
Biopharma scored a victory of sorts in the ongoing 340B war that’s pitting drug companies against the combined forces of hospital groups, contract pharmacies and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
With the FDA approval of Scemblix (asciminib), a STAMP inhibitor for treating chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in adults, Novartis AG has a companion to its longstanding therapy Gleevec (imatinib) as a treatment for the indication.
Novartis AG has had another setback in its attempt to get canakinumab to work in oncology, after the interleukin-1beta (IL-1β) inhibitor flunked a phase III trial in first-line advanced lung cancer.
Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH is the latest drug company to come into the crosshairs of the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration over its restrictions on giving 340B drug discounts to contract pharmacies.
DUBLIN – Allarity Therapeutics A/S plans to file an NDA with FDA for dovitinib in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) in the fourth quarter this year, after unveiling a new analysis at the European Society for Molecular Oncology’s virtual congress, which suggest that its companion diagnostic, DRP, can identify patients who obtain a survival benefit from the therapy.
NICE has said “no” to regular NHS funding for a rare disease gene therapy from Orchard Therapeutics Ltd. in draft guidance – although experience from Novartis AG’s pricey Zolgensma (onasemnogene abeparvovec) for spinal muscular atrophy shows this could change. That’s because this week NICE published final guidance that recommends funding for Zolgensma, thought to be the world’s most expensive drug, after an initial rejection late last year.
U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) came out swinging against the biopharma industry’s innovation talking point July 8 when she released a House Oversight Committee staff report on U.S. drug prices and the games drug manufacturers play to delay competition.
