Joe Kiani’s reign at Masimo Corp. abruptly ended following a vote at the annual shareholders meeting on Sept. 19 that saw Kiani, Masimo’s founder and CEO, ousted from the board as part of a hard-fought battle with activist investor Politan Capital Management. Michelle Brennan, a Politan nominee and former Johnson & Johnson senior executive who won her board seat last year, was named interim CEO.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit remanded a patent case to district court after finding that a patent applicant need not invoke identical terminology when describing a central feature of a catheter technology across multiple patents.
With two drugs cleared by the U.S. FDA for Niemann-Pick disease type C (NPC) in less than seven days, Wall Street was pondering the differences between the compounds, given what’s known so far about each. Most recently, the FDA approved Intrabio Inc.’s Aqneursa (levacetylleucine) on its PDUFA date for the treatment of neurological manifestations of NPC in adults and pediatric patients weighing at least 15 kg, making Aqneursa the only approved stand-alone therapy indicated for NPC. On Sept. 20, Zevra Therapeutics Inc. won FDA clearance for Miplyffa (arimoclomol) as the first treatment for NPC.
The U.S. FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) on Sept. 26 will take up a controversy that’s hardly new: whether approval of immune checkpoint inhibitor drugs should be restricted in accordance with PD-L1 expression.
While in the hot seat at a Sept. 24 U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing, Novo Nordisk A/S President and CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen said he would sit down with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and the three largest pharmacy benefit managers to discuss lowering the list prices for the company’s popular diabetes and weight-loss drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy.
Interim phase II data of Wave Life Sciences Ltd.’s oligonucleotide, WVE-N531, revealed “impressive” dystrophin expression, solid safety and the potential for once-monthly dosing for boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy who are amenable to exon 53 skipping. The findings drove Wave Life’s stock (NASDAQ:WVE) up by 53.4%, or $2.85, to close Sept. 24 at $8.19, after peaking earlier in the day at $8.35, its 52-week high.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reined in a district court that invalidated three claims in an Astellas Pharma Inc. patent protecting bladder drug Myrbetriq (mirabegron) based on a issue that was never argued.
Michelle Tarver, the acting director of the U.S. FDA’s device center appeared on a Sept. 24 webinar to discuss her priorities for the agency going forward, one of which is global health equity.
When the U.S. FTC filed suit Sept. 20 against the country’s three largest pharmacy benefit managers over their alleged use of rebates to artificially inflate U.S. insulin prices, it also put the three big insulin makers, and other drug manufacturers, on notice that they could be next.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit revived the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America’s (PhRMA) constitutional challenge to the Medicare price negotiations, sending it back to a federal court in Texas for a do-over.
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