PERTH, Australia – Biopharma stakeholders are furious about the consultation process the Australian government has pursued with its review of the country’s National Medicines Policy, and they are asking the government to hold off on making any changes until after the federal election that is scheduled for May.
Chinese investment in U.S. companies is dropping, but Chinese biopharma firms are increasingly eyeing licensing deals on early stage inventions patented by U.S. universities, Lin Sun-Hoffman, founding partner at Liu, Chen & Hoffman LLP, said during a Feb. 24 U.S. Patent and Trademark Office webinar on biopharma patents in China.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Glaxosmithkline, Hightide, Sanofi.
With the first global approval by Health Canada in hand, Medicago Inc. aims to provide 20 million doses this year of Covifenz – which itself represents another first, as a plant-originated, virus-like particle, recombinant, adjuvanted COVID-19 vaccine. “Hopefully, if all goes well, we’ll be able to do it faster than the last day of the last month” of the year, said Brian Ward, medical officer of Quebec City-based Medicago, a unit of Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corp., which partnered on Covifenz with Glaxosmithkline plc (GSK).
A sense of normalcy is returning to the U.K., at least from a regulatory perspective. The U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency will continue to support COVID-19 clinical trials with ongoing regulatory and scientific input, but all further applications and meeting requests for COVID-19 products will be considered according to usual timelines rather than on an emergency basis, the agency said Feb. 23.
On the success of last year’s establishment of a global mRNA vaccine technology transfer hub in South Africa, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced its next step Feb. 23: the creation of a global biomanufacturing training hub in South Korea that will serve low- and middle-income countries wanting to produce biologics, such as vaccines, insulin, monoclonal antibodies and cancer treatments.
The U.S. SEC reported a settlement Feb. 23 with Baxter International Inc. and its former treasurer, Scott Bohaboy, and former assistant treasurer, Jeffrey Schaible, resolving charges involving years of improper intra-company foreign exchange transactions that resulted in the misstatement of Baxter’s net income.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: 4D Pharma, AB Science, Abbvie, Armata, Bharat Biotech, Beigene, Cansino, Homology, Ocugen, Provention, RDIF.
Paving the way for wider dissemination of up-to-date information on drugs approved in the EU, the European Medicines Regulatory Network adopted a common standard for the electronic product information (EPI), which includes the package leaflet for patients and the summary of product characteristics for health care professionals.