Bristol Meyers Squibb Co. (BMS) joined the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) pile-on June 16, filing a third constitutional challenge to the U.S. Medicare drug price negotiations mandated in the law that was narrowly passed last year on a partisan vote.
Following the death of a patient, the U.S. FDA halted Arcellx Inc.’s phase II pivotal trial of its CAR T-cell therapy for relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma (MM), putting Gilead Sciences Inc., which in December made the risky decision to part with $225 million up front for rights to the immunotherapy, in likely turmoil.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported a settlement with San Francisco-based 1Health.io Inc. for allegations that the consumer gene testing company failed to properly secure customers’ data, an oversight that will cost the company only $75,000 in fines.
If Eli Lilly and Co. had been hoping its migraine drug, Emgality (galcanezumab), would emerge with unequivocal superiority against Pfizer Inc.’s Nurtec ODT (rimegepant orally disintegrating tablet), giving the once-monthly injectable biologic an advantage in the highly competitive CGRP space, the pharma firm likely was disappointed. Findings from the phase IV Challenge-MIG study did not meet the primary endpoint, which called for Emgality’s statistical superiority over Nurtec ODT on the percentage of patients achieving a 50% or greater reduction in monthly migraine days.
Whoever said beauty is only skin deep hasn’t looked below to see what Sientra Inc. has made available there recently. The medical aesthetics company now boasts the only tissue expander cleared in the U.S. for exposure to magnetic resonance imaging, an important screening tool for breast reconstruction patients. Sientra’s CTO Denise Dajles told BioWorld the newly cleared Allox2 Pro Tissue Expander builds on the original expander also cleared by the FDA. “No other expander in the market has an MRI compatibility indication because they are based on a metal, i.e., metallic ports and big magnets in them,” Dajles explained.
In its first untitled letter in more than a year, the U.S. FDA’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) took Xeris Biopharma Holdings Inc. to task for two webpages promoting the company’s Recorlev.
The U.S. FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) voted unanimously to recommend COVID-19 vaccines for the 2023-2024 vaccination campaign be monovalent vaccines that target the XBB variants, currently the most prominent variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
After almost 30 years in business, Sangamo Therapeutics Inc. is finally nearing a BLA filing for one of its programs. But the company, wounded by the recent loss of alliances with Biogen Inc. and Novartis AG, is also running out of cash and investor interest – and it badly needs a new deal to stay afloat.
Clene Inc. plans to sit down in the third quarter of this year with the U.S. FDA for talks about approval for gold nanocrystal suspension CNM-Au8, bolstered by favorable biomarker findings in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) from the phase II/III Healey ALS platform trial – along with a sizeable time-to-event and survival data package that should drive the conversation.
Patients with an aggressive form of lymphoma who have failed prior therapies now have a new option for treatment with the U.S. FDA’s accelerated approval of Columvi (glofitamab-gxbm), which was granted under priority review a few weeks ahead of the July 1 PDUFA date.