A former sales rep for Cambridge, Mass.-based Aegerion Pharmaceuticals Inc. was sentenced Oct. 28 to 54 months in prison and three years of supervised release for a scheme to defraud insurance companies and boost his bonuses for sales of Aegerion’s cholesterol drug, Juxtapid (lomitapide).
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.
The FDA has granted emergency use authorization (EUA) to the COVID-19 vaccine created by Pfizer Inc.-Biontech SE for use in children ages 5 through 11. This is the first EUA for a COVID-19 vaccine to be awarded for this group of roughly 28 million children in the U.S. and it comes after weeks of lengthy debate among experts about the wisdom of targeting the young demographic.
In an effort to advance a fiscal 2022 spending package through a divided Congress, U.S. President Joe Biden released the framework for his Build Back Better agenda Oct. 28 – minus provisions that would allow Medicare to directly negotiate at least some prescription drug prices.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is proposing to withdraw or repeal a Trump-era rule imposing expiration dates on most of the rules implemented by the department and its agencies, including the FDA.
Targeting the thousands of rare inherited diseases that have no treatments in the U.S., a newly launched public-private group plans to pursue efforts to optimize and streamline the gene therapy development process.
As part of its ongoing research into drug advertising, the FDA’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) is proposing a study to understand how “targeted mechanism of action” (MoA) claims influence patients and health care providers when they’re used in drug ads and other promotional materials.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has restored a rule that requires prior authorization for any mergers that affect a market that was the subject of previous allegations of attempted anticompetitive behavior. The agency’s press release on the change seems to respond to the decision by Illumina Inc. to complete its acquisition of Grail Inc. and its multicancer screening test, as indicated by the statement that the policy would address the behavior of companies that see little risk to their long-term market strategies despite FTC opposition to an acquisition.
The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) voted 17-0, with one abstention, that the benefits of Pfizer Inc.-Biontech SE pediatric formulation of its two-dose COVID-19 vaccine outweigh its risks for children ages 5 through 11. Many of those votes came with caveats, as the VRBPAC members struggled with the unknowns of the vaccine and the fear that schools would mandate its use, even though it would still be considered experimental if the FDA grants it an emergency use authorization.
DUBLIN – Oncopeptides AB has withdrawn its troubled multiple myeloma
drug Pepaxto (melphalan flufenamide) from the U.S. market, less than eight months after receiving an accelerated approval from the FDA. The move comes less than a week before the FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee was due to consider the drug’s safety profile because of data anomalies that surfaced over the summer.
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