It was a busy day at Moderna Inc. as Merck & Co. Inc. exercised its option to jointly develop and commercialize a personalized cancer vaccine with Moderna in a deal the two companies inked in 2016. Moderna also notched another emergency use authorization (EUA) for its COVID-19 vaccine, this one targeting the omicron variant, for use by those under age 18.
Many industry watchers are looking to 2023’s Humira biosimilar launch in the U.S. as a portent of the future of biosimilars. While it should help raise awareness of biosimilars in general and produce savings in the immunology sector, its distinctness could make it an outlier in the world of current and future biosimilar competition.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Etiometry, Neurologica, Osteocentric Technologies, Xact Robotics.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: AB Science, Aquestive, Eligo, Gilead, Harm Reduction, Pharming, Rigel, Teraimmune.
The U.S. FDA’s agreement with industry for the fifth device user fee agreement (MDUFA V) included a pilot for the total product life cycle advisory program, or TAP, which is designed to ensure that potential device problems are addressed before production of the finished device design. However, the agency acknowledged that the TAP program will require significant numbers of new hires, which promises to be a significant hurdle given that the agency struggled to meet its hiring goals under the previous device user fee agreement.
The draft rule for the Medicare physician fee schedule (MPFS) for calendar year 2022 included a revised definition of the term “physician-owned distributorship,” or PODs, but the associated data collection requirements do not go into effect until January 2023. However, Amanda Johnston, managing attorney at Gardner Law of Stillwater, Minn., said recently that there is the possibility that this new definition could become a subject for enforcement action under the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS), thus elevating the legal risks for device manufacturers who have not updated their compliance practices.
At the third time of asking, Scpharmaceuticals Inc. has seen its subcutaneous loop diuretic, Furoscix (furosemide), approved by the U.S. FDA for patients with worsening heart failure, although the news was greeted initially by a shock slump in the firm’s share price.
Even though the EU had approved more than a dozen biosimilars by 2012, the follow-on biologics were still in their embryonic stage around the world when BioWorld published The Biosimilars Game: A Scorecard for Opportunities, Threats and Critical Strategies in early 2013. Now, nearly a decade later, the global biosimilar landscape has matured with many more biosimilars approved across the globe, but the uptake, and thus the savings, is not what some policy makers and people in industry had hoped for or expected.
A review of Australia’s National Medicines Policy was begun in August 2021 but was paused until after the federal election in May to allow stakeholders more time to provide feedback.
Hua Medicine Ltd. has received marketing approval from China's NMPA for its glucokinase activator (GKA), Huatangning (dorzagliatin tablets), for two indications: as a monotherapy to improve blood glucose control for drug-naïve type 2 diabetes patients and in combination with metformin in metformin-tolerated type 2 diabetes patients to control blood glucose level. It marks the first GKA drug to gain approval in any market, according to Hua.
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