Novo Nordisk A/S is the latest drug company to be challenged by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has made tilting at prescription drug prices one of the hallmarks of his tenure as chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

Thanks to technological advances, the U.S. FDA is reducing the quantity of reserve drug samples that must be retained from bioavailability and bioequivalence studies.

Merck & Co. Inc. is looking to a fast launch for sotatercept, its newly U.S. FDA-approved pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) drug. The agency cleared the drug, branded Winrevair, under priority review on its March 26 PDUFA date, marking the first in a new class of therapies the company has touted for its potential for disease modification.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was quite vocal in its statement regarding a recent hospital cybersecurity breach, but HHS recently suffered an undisclosed data breach that cost $7.5 million in taxpayer monies.

While some states are beginning to double down on the prices they pay for prescription drugs, the state of Colorado is taking it to a whole new level with its Prescription Drug Affordability Review Board that was empowered to set maximum prices of prescription drugs it considers “unaffordable.”

Regenerative medicine company Mesoblast Ltd. saw its stock shoot up 45% on the news that the U.S. FDA is satisfied with the additional data submitted from the company’s phase III study for remestemcel-L for treatment of adults with steroid-refractory acute graft-vs.-host disease (SR-aGVHD) to support filing a BLA in pediatric patients with SR-aGVHD.

The U.S. FDA granted emergency use authorization (EUA) on March 22 for Waltham, Mass.-based Invivyd Inc.’s half-life extended monoclonal antibody (MAb) VYD-222 – making it available to prevent COVID-19 in immunocompromised adults and adolescents – but its use comes with a boxed warning for anaphylaxis.