Landing on the right COVID-19 vaccine formulation for the coming season is becoming more complicated against a backdrop of low vaccination rates, young children with little to no immunization, declining surveillance data and a new SARS-COV-2 lineage slowly emerging.
Abbott Laboratories received CE mark approval for two dual glucose and ketone sensing systems, bringing to the market sensors that could be transformational to the lives of people with diabetes at risk of diabetic ketoacidosis.
Payoff for the November 2023 buyout of Immunogen Inc. came for Abbvie Inc. in the form of U.S. FDA clearance for the CD123-targeting antibody-drug conjugate Decnupaz (pivekimab sunirine) to treat adults with blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN), an ultra-rare, aggressive and quick-killing hematologic malignancy.
On the heels of the multibillion-dollar licensing deal between Bristol Myers Squibb Co. and Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd., Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI), of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urging him to add biotechnology as a prohibited technology under the Comprehensive Outbound Investment National Security (COINS) Act of 2025.
Acknowledging that the spread of the Andes virus and the resulting disease, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, “constitutes a credible risk of a future public health emergency,” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy is issuing a declaration to provide liability protection for manufacturers, distributors and providers using favipiravir as a medical countermeasure (MCM) against the virus.
What would normally be a routine meeting of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee May 28 may be more carefully watched given the overall turmoil surrounding vaccines in the U.S. The only task before the adcom is to recommend the COVID-19 vaccine formula for the upcoming season. That conversation will include looking at the effectiveness of the four FDA-approved vaccines currently in use in the U.S.
New regulations tighten regulatory oversight of China’s investigator-initiated trials (IITs) but legitimize the pathway that will be open to other modalities beyond cell and gene therapies.
As generic versions of its blockbuster drug Ofev (nintedanib) start to hit the market, Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH looks to have swerved the patent cliff, with European and Japanese regulators both approving a potential replacement, Jascayd (nerandomilast), this week. At its monthly meeting, the EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use also recommended Novartis AG’s Vijoice (alpelisib) be given conditional approval in the treatment of PIK3CA-related overgrowth spectrum disorders.
As of May 21, the U.S. SEC’s “no-deny” settlement policy is dead. For the past 50 years, the agency has required settling defendants to sign an agreement stating that they neither admit nor deny the SEC’s allegations. And beyond that, the standard settlement prohibits, under threat of court action, the defendants from ever denying the allegations publicly. According to an SEC notice to be published in the May 21 Federal Register, the agency has reconsidered the issue and is now rescinding the no-deny rule.