How many patents does it take to violate U.S. antitrust law? That question isn’t a lead-in to a lame joke. Neither is it a valid question for a patent challenge, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which Aug. 1 affirmed the dismissal of a payer suit against Abbvie Inc. that claimed the North Chicago drug company violated the Sherman Antitrust Act when it obtained 132 patents on Humira (adalimumab) and then invoked them against biosimilars.
Genuine Biotech Co. Ltd.’s azvudine has been granted conditional approval by China’s NMPA for the treatment of COVID-19. The drug, first granted conditional approval from the NMPA to treat HIV-1-infected adults with high viral loads in July 2021, is the first domestically developed oral medicine approved to treat COVID-19 in China and was approved just 10 days after its application was submitted on July 15.
As Democrats in the U.S. Senate rush to pass prescription drug pricing reforms through the reconciliation process this week, the nonpartisan Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) is offering Japan’s experience with government price controls as a cautionary tale.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Alx, Arcutis, Armata, Beam, Biosight, Celyad, Eccogene, Eledon, Gamida, Janssen, Krystal, Pharming, Scynexis, Veru, Zenas.
As Democrats in the U.S. Senate rush to pass prescription drug pricing reforms through the reconciliation process this week, the nonpartisan Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) is offering Japan’s experience with government price controls as a cautionary tale. “Stringent drug price controls have significantly hampered the competitive and innovative capacity of Japan’s biopharmaceutical industry in recent decades, serving as a warning for U.S. policymakers considering introducing Medicare Part D drug price controls in 2022,” according to the ITIF.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Biovica, Outset.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Abbvie, Immunitybio, Omeros, Shine.
The U.S. FDA posted notice of a class I recall for two hemodialysis catheters made by Covidien Inc., the Palindrome and Mahurkar catheters, due to a catheter hub defect that could lead to mixing of venous and arterial blood. No deaths and only one injury have been reported in connection with the defect, but the recall affects more than 1 million devices that went into distribution starting in June 2017, one of the numerically larger recalls in recent years.
The U.S. FDA has proposed to down-classify optical diagnostic devices and electrical impedance spectrometers from class III to class II, but there was little support for such a change in the first day of a two-day advisory hearing. The panelists saw the risk of a false negative for melanoma as too high to allow such devices to go through the 510(k) program, and thus manufacturers of these devices may continue to be required to file PMAs, replete with costly studies and long timelines to approval.
Drug and device makers that offer health care professionals opportunities to earn continuing medical education (CME) points have a fine line to walk when sponsoring those programs, but a new advisory opinion by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Health and Human Services seems to draw a very clear line around those programs.
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