The debate around the U.S. 340B prescription drug discount program is once again heating up in court and in Congress. A day after the American Hospital Association called on the FTC and Department of Justice to investigate alleged antitrust issues with the rebate models a few drug companies have proposed, some members of Congress raised concerns Sept. 9 about how providers are abusing the program. Meanwhile, a U.S. appellate court heard arguments that same day on whether states can speak in the silence of the federal law that created the program more than 30 years ago.
Argo Biopharmaceutical Co. Ltd. and its RNAi work drew Novartis AG back to the table for a third time, as the companies entered a potential $5.2 billion deal involving cardiovascular-focused assets, including a right to first negotiation for BW-00112, an angiopoietin-like protein 3-targeting siRNA in phase II testing in severe hypertriglyceridemia.
Following a May phase II readout and a recent presentation of Tourmaline Bio Inc.’s long-acting anti-IL-6 IgG2 monoclonal antibody, pacibekitug, for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), Novartis AG offered $1.4 billion, or $48 per share, to buy the barely 4-year-old company. Previously shelved by Pfizer Inc., which had been developing it for autoimmune disorders, pacibekitug fell into the hands of New York-based Tourmaline through a May 2022 license agreement. In addition to the Tranquility phase II trial in ASCVD, the company’s lead product is also in the phase IIb Spirited trial for thyroid eye disease, a readout for which is expected in early 2026.
Argo Biopharmaceutical Co. Ltd. and its RNAi work drew Novartis AG back to the table for a third time, as the companies entered a potential $5.2 billion deal involving cardiovascular-focused assets, including a right to first negotiation for BW-00112, an angiopoietin-like protein 3-targeting siRNA in phase II testing in severe hypertriglyceridemia.
Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals Inc. has announced a global licensing and collaboration agreement with Novartis AG for ARO-SNCA, Arrowhead’s preclinical stage siRNA therapy for the treatment of synucleinopathies such as Parkinson’s disease, and for additional targets.
Acute pancreatitis took center stage as Wall Street took heed of phase III data from Ionis Pharmaceuticals Inc. with olezarsen for severe hypertriglyceridemia (sHTG), while another player in the space, Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals Inc., signed a sizeable deal in a separate therapeutic area with Novartis AG.
Twenty-two years since its formation, Bioarctic AB expects to become profitable in 2025, as milestones for marketing approvals and royalties on sales of the Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi (lecanemab) roll in, and partners sign up to use its proprietary Braintransporter drug delivery technology.
Novartis AG has synthesized cyanotrizole compounds reported to be useful for the treatment of leishmaniasis, American trypanosomiasis (Chagas disease) and African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness).
At last week’s American Chemical Society meeting, Novartis AG presented the discovery of IID-432, a highly efficacious and safe inhibitor of Trypanosoma cruzi topoisomerase 2 (Top2), offering a short-duration curative treatment for Chagas disease.
Novartis AG’s monoclonal antibody, ianalumab, has notched back-to-back wins, one in treating Sjögren’s disease and the other for primary immune thrombocytopenia (ITP). In Sjögren’s, which has no U.S. FDA-approved treatment, the phase III Neptunus-1 and Neptunus-2 studies are the first phase III trials to prompt statically significant reductions in adults with the autoimmune disease. In ITP, a disease that has yet to see a cure, top-line data of a phase III study of ianalumab combined with eltrombopag stretched to the time to treatment failure compared to placebo, the primary endpoint showing the maintenance of safe platelet levels.
