The U.S. NIH said it will go to court if necessary to defend its role in developing Moderna Inc.’s COVID-19 vaccine. NIH spokeswoman Renate Myles told BioWorld that the agency “is not giving up on our claim that NIH is a co-inventor on the mRNA technology used in the Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine but defers to legal authorities on how this might be resolved.”
Kaléo Inc. agreed to pay $12.7 million to end whistleblower allegations that the Richmond, Va.-based company caused the submission of false claims for Evzio (naloxone hydrochloride), an injectable drug used to reverse opioid overdoses.
Ultrasound companies, Caption Health Inc. and Ultromics Ltd. are linking up to jointly offer Caption’s AI software platform with Ultromics’ Echogo deep ultrasound analytics for cardiovascular disease detection.
Entities that lack experience in FDA regulation of medical devices may find the going both expensive and time consuming, but there are resources available to these players in the digital health space. Bakul Patel, director of the Digital Health Center of Excellence at the FDA’s device center, said that while he understands that reading through agency guidance is an unpleasant task, the companies that take the time to do so may find their interactions with the agency less iterative and more productive, thus speeding their path to market.
Lawfully selling prescription opioid drugs is not a public nuisance, the Oklahoma Supreme Court said in overturning a $465 million judgment against Johnson & Johnson (J&J).
Arthrex Inc., of Naples, Fla., is well known for lobbing a legal hand grenade into the inter partes review (IPR) process for patent disputes, but the company is now drawing ink for a different legal reason. According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), Arthrex has agreed to pay $16 million to settle allegations that it engaged in kickbacks to a surgeon, payments ostensibly made to pay for assistance with device design, but which the DoJ claims were intended to induce the surgeon’s use and endorsement of Arthrex products.
The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has withdrawn the proposal to provide automatic Medicare coverage of FDA breakthrough devices, but the proposal may not be as dead as it once seemed.
A U.S. district court jury in Boston found Nov. 5 that Gregory Lemelson and Massachusetts-based Lemelson Capital Management LLC made fraudulent misrepresentations about Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc. to drive down the San Diego company’s stock price.
Shares in Rewalk Robotics Ltd. are on the rise after the FDA awarded its Reboot exoskeleton device breakthrough device designation status. The wearable, battery-powered device is designed to assist individuals with lower limb disability due to stroke.