The toxicity associated with oncology therapies is the stuff of legend with clinicians and patients, and thus the U.S. FDA and manufacturers have been working to fine tune these dosing regimens. However, the FDA's Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE) includes a programmatic effort to optimize dosing regimens, which led to an editorial by FDA officials that calls on industry to consider whether the maximum tolerated dose paradigm is really the optimal approach to oncology drug development.
Pricing new drugs for the U.S. market, especially those treating rare diseases, is getting a lot more complex now that the Medicare inflation rebate is in play. The rebate provision in the newly enacted Inflation Reduction Act incentivizes companies to set higher launch prices for drugs that will be used by Medicare beneficiaries since their future price increases will be limited to the rate of inflation. Although some of the other drug pricing measures included in the new law won’t kick in for a few years, the Medicare inflation rebate is to become effective next year.
More than four years after Right to Try legislation was enacted in the U.S., the FDA is issuing a final rule, Annual Summary Reporting Requirements Under the Right to Try Act, specifying the deadline and content for the annual reports the law requires participating drug sponsors or manufacturers to submit.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Acadia, Biolinerx, BMS, Chiesi, Mersana, Vaxxinity.
Bristol Myers Squibb Co. (BMS) dodged a black-box warning on the label of just-approved Sotyktu (deucravacitinib), but hurdles lie ahead for the first-in-class, oral, allosteric tyrosine kinase 2 inhibitor. Designed to treat adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis who are candidates for systemic therapy or phototherapy, Sotyktu is priced as $75,000 per year, and will become available during September, BMS said.
With a goal of manufacturing biotechnology in the U.S. that’s invented in the U.S., President Joe Biden signed an executive order Sept. 12 launching a National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative that’s intended to strengthen the country’s bioeconomy, build stronger supply chains, and better utilize and secure biological data.
Spectrum Pharmaceuticals Inc. celebrated a long-awaited win with the U.S. FDA’s approval late Sept. 9 of novel G-CSF drug eflapegrastim, cleared for use in chemotherapy-induced neutropenia nearly four years after the company first filed for regulatory approval. Despite moves this year to reduce its cash burn, Spectrum has ready to go a commercial team expected to sell eflapegrastim as well as cancer drug poziotinib, which is under FDA review with a PDUFA date of Nov. 24, 2022.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Pfizer.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Amylyx, Neuroplast, Revance, Silence, Vanda, Veru, Yishengbio.
What a difference a U.S. FDA advisory committee meeting can make. In the wake of the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee voting 7-2 Sept. 7 to recommend approval of Amylyx Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) candidate, shares of the Cambridge, Mass.-based company (NASDAQ:AMLX) more than regained the value they lost in March when the same committee voted against approval of AMX-0035.