Investors clipped shares of Avadel Pharmaceuticals plc recently as anxieties rose over the application by Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc for a patent that relates to a once-nightly oxybate product that could threaten the prospects for Avadel’s FT-218.
HONG KONG – The Korean 2020 KoNECT-MOHW-MFDS International Conference, which is taking place online this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, faced a challenging start. Technical difficulties hampered some of the early proceeding. However, technology took focus again later in the day in a more positive, with an exploration of artificial intelligence (AI).
LONDON – New evidence from seven randomized controlled trials and a simultaneously conducted meta-analysis has again demonstrated that corticosteroids show significant benefit in patients who are critically ill with COVID-19, reducing length of hospital stay and cutting 28-day mortality.
As 2020 approaches its last quarter, scientists around the globe continue their all-consuming efforts to find effective therapeutics and vaccines to fight the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, which currently has a 3.35% fatality rate and has been plaguing the world for more than half a year. While the fight rages on, people are growing weary of political posturing and community debates. They face a serious conundrum of how to best protect those vulnerable to the virus, while still considering the psychological and economic impacts of societal lockdowns.
HONG KONG – Tokyo-based Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. has launched a subcutaneous injection of Enspryng (satralizumab) in Japan to prevent relapses of neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD), including neuromyelitis optica (NMO).
The FDA came through at last for Athlone, Ireland-based Innocoll Holdings Ltd., greenlighting the drug-device combo Xaracoll (bupivacaine HCl) for acute postsurgical pain relief for up to 24 hours in adults after open inguinal hernia repair.
With the FDA approval of Cassiopea SpA’s Winlevi (clascoterone cream 1%) to treat acne in patients 12 years and older, the European company hailed it as the first acne drug in 40 years with a new mechanism of action.
“Maybe this is not their final offer and maybe they’re not digging as deep as they perhaps could or should,” Michael Abrams, managing partner and co-founder of Numerof & Associates, said of the biopharma industry’s counteroffer to U.S. President Donald Trump on drug pricing. But the offer “is not inconsequential,” he told BioWorld, noting that it reportedly could deliver $100 billion in savings over 10 years. The proposal also offers the president the opportunity to say he delivered on his promise to lower prescription drug prices as he campaigns for re-election, whereas his threatened executive order granting Medicare and other federal programs “most favorable nation pricing” for prescription drugs would still be in the rulemaking process when voters head to the polls or their mailboxes in November.
HONG KONG – Telangana, India-based Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd. has launched Avigan (favipiravir), Fujifilm Holdings Corp.’s potential COVID-19 treatment, in India.
DUBLIN – Adrenomed AG has reported encouraging, albeit limited, data for its antibody adrecizumab in eight COVID-19 patients in Germany with life-threatening acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). The drug was made available on a named-patient basis to critically ill patients undergoing mechanical ventilation.