Fidget spinners are hand-held toys based on a roller bearing and three weighted lobes, which can spin freely, creating centrifugal force when activated manually. Generating centrifugal force with a fidget spinner takes neither electricity nor trained staff. And that has suggested to several researchers that such spinners, under the right circumstances, could be used for centrifugation under circumstances where reliably operating a centrifuge, for whatever reason, is a challenge.
Nearly four years after differences between U.S. and Russian clinical results derailed an NDA for its pregnancy prevention candidate, Phexxi, San Diego-based Evofem Biosciences Inc. has prevailed, winning FDA approval today for the vaginal pH regulator.
Marking a key advance for Akebia Therapeutics Inc. in the global race to establish a new class of medicines for chronic kidney disease-associated anemia, the first of its two pivotal phase III programs proved its lead candidate, vadadustat, noninferior to darbepoetin alfa in adults on dialysis.
Despite the higher placebo response than a previous, identically designed experiment turned up, Cara Therapeutics Inc.’s Kalm-2 phase III study Korsuva (CR-845/difelikefalin) for injection handily reached its primary endpoint in hemodialysis patients with moderate to severe chronic kidney disease-associated pruritus (CKD-aP).
LONDON – AM-Pharma BV raised a further $52 million for the phase III trial of its recombinant alkaline phosphatase product, Recap, in treating sepsis-associated acute kidney injury (AKI), but now faces a delay in starting the study, as the COVID-19 crisis takes up more and more clinical resources.
Now that Rockwell Medical Inc.’s intravenous formulation of Triferic, Triferic AVNU (ferric pyrophosphate citrate) is FDA-approved, the nod coming a day before its PDUFA date of March 28, the company plans putting evaluation programs into action during the third quarter of this year. Only after those programs’ completion will the formulation be available commercially.
Geneva-based Obseva SA’s phase III Primrose 2 trial with gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) antagonist linzagolix in heavy menstrual bleeding (HMB) due to uterine fibroids (UFs) hit the primary endpoint in 94% of patients, and the company in the second quarter of 2020 will report six-month data from the Primrose 1 study, which is also a phase III experiment, in the same indication.
LONDON – Kandy Therapeutics Ltd. has announced positive results for its nonhormonal treatment for menopause symptoms, showing a reduction in the number of hot flashes and night sweats, and a positive effect on secondary endpoints relating to mood and quality of life.
Researchers are hopeful that within three to five years the first once-a-month oral contraceptive could reach human testing. They achieved an early step on that path with the publication of research testing the long-lasting drug delivery device from Watertown, Mass.-based startup Lyndra Therapeutics Inc. in the Dec. 4, 2019, issue of Science Translational Medicine.
New top-line results from a phase III study of Ardelyx Inc.'s tenapanor – recently approved in irritable bowel syndrome – confirmed the drug can also help dialysis-dependent chronic kidney disease patients with hyperphosphatemia achieve reduced serum phosphorus levels vs. placebo.
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