Those cheap prescription drug prices other countries get? They're not always the result of savvy government negotiations. An antitrust suit the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit dismissed Tuesday alleges that some of those low prices may be innovator shenanigans intended to prevent or delay biosimilar competition in the U.S. market.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has decreed that the regulations governing appointment of judges to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) violate the U.S. Constitution – a decision that gives a medical device maker a new bite at patent litigation, but which also raises the question of whether a large number of PTAB decisions will have to be relitigated.

How much Senate Democrats oppose President Donald Trump's new nominee to take over the reins of the FDA could depend on whom they dislike or distrust more – Stephen Hahn, the nominee, or Brett Giroir, who just became the new acting FDA commissioner.

Shares in Aveo Pharmaceutical Inc. (NASDAQ:AVEO), commonly called Aveo Oncology, fell 36.7% Monday to 57 cents after the FDA dashed hopes that positive interim data from a late-stage study of tivozanib would overcome agency concerns about the drug's efficacy in relapsed/refractory renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Advised by the regulator not to submit an NDA at this time, Aveo now plans to collect more mature data ahead of filing its NDA in the first quarter of 2020. A discussion with the FDA's Oncologic Drug Advisory Committee will likely be required too, the agency said.

How vulnerable is the U.S. biopharma supply if China were to halt exports of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs)? No one knows. "We cannot assess the extent of U.S. dependence on China," Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), said in testimony to a House subcommittee Wednesday.

Deciding which patients should go into the intensive care unit (ICU) after surgery is a difficult call and typically made entirely at the surgeon's discretion. The result is that surgeons typically err on the side of caution by putting more post-operative patients in the ICU than necessary. To aid in better ICU decision-making, physicians at New York University Langone Hospital System (NYU Langone) developed a machine learning algorithm that combs through a patient's electronic medical record to identify relevant factors to determine if they needed the ICU after surgery.

The third time is proving not to be so charming for Agile Therapeutics Inc. as it prepares its lead candidate for a date Wednesday with the FDA's Bone, Reproductive and Urologic Drugs Advisory Committee.

Genomic testing firm Veracyte Inc. is eyeing 2021 for the launch of its noninvasive nasal swab classifier for early lung cancer detection and diagnosis, following preliminary clinical data demonstrating high sensitivity in low-risk patients and high specificity in high-risk patients with known lung nodules. The South San Francisco-based company is developing the nasal swab test in collaboration with Johnson & Johnson Inc.'s Lung Cancer Initiative, part of a long-term strategic collaboration that also aims to speed commercialization of Veracyte's Percepta genomic sequencing classifier.