The announcement from Scott Gottlieb that he was resigning as FDA commissioner took the industry by surprise, and the news weighed heavily on biopharmaceutical equities, with the BioWorld Biopharmaceutical index falling almost 4 percent by market close Thursday. The drop in value was greater than that experienced in the general markets, with the Nasdaq Composite index and Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 2 and 1.3 percent, respectively, over the same three-day period. 

More than 100,000 Americans are currently living with sickle cell disease (SCD), which occurs in approximately one out of every 500 African-American births and one out of every 36,000 Hispanic-American births, according to estimates by the CDC. In 2017 and 2018, two new medicines to treat SCD were approved by the FDA – the first therapies to be marketed in almost two decades.

Seven big pharma company executives from Abbvie Inc., Astrazeneca plc, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co. Inc., Pfizer Inc. and Sanofi SA were called to face a grilling last week from members of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee at their second hearing on prescription drug prices. 

SAN DIEGO – Advice for startups from pharma executives and venture capitalists abounded at the Biocom Global Life Science Partnering Conference last week.