With an FDA approval decision on treosulfan possibly more than a year off, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Medac GmbH a third one-year extension of its method-of-use patent covering the drug, which is being developed as a conditioning agent in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.
The vagaries of the COVID-19 market and the uncertainties of pandemic fatigue are hitting some biopharma companies in the pocketbook, at least for now. Due to lower-than-expected revenues from its COVID-19 Comirnaty vaccine and antiviral Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir/ritonavir), Pfizer Inc. reduced its 2023 revenue guidance by $9 billion after hours Oct. 13, saying it now anticipates full-year 2023 revenues to range from $58 billion to $61 billion – down from its previous guidance range of $67 billion to $70 billion.
With an eye on making the U.K. more attractive for clinical trial research, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency took a step Oct. 12 to overhaul its clinical trials regulations by reducing the approval time for the lowest-risk studies.
As it continues its crackdown on accelerated approval, the FDA continues to stress that successfully completing confirmatory trials should be the top priority for sponsors of drugs that enter the U.S. market via accelerated approval.
Hoping to find a niche where it can be a pacesetter in biopharma development, the Canadian government is investing CA$49 million (US$36 million) in the new Conscience Open Science Drug Discovery Network. The investment will be used to accelerate drug R&D “by leveraging Canadian strengths in artificial intelligence and employing open science principles to drive efficiencies in building Canadian innovation capacity and delivering the medicines that Canadians need,” François-Philippe Champagne, minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, said in announcing the funding Oct. 5.
Following an unexpected FDA complete response letter (CRL), Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. said it will no longer pursue an expanded indication for Onpattro (patisiran) in the U.S. The RNAi therapeutic was approved in 2018 to treat polyneuropathy of hereditary transthyretin-mediated (ATTR) amyloidosis and seemed well on its way to snagging a second U.S. indication after the FDA’s Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee voted 9-3 in September that the drug’s benefits outweighed its risks as a treatment for cardiomyopathy of ATTR amyloidosis. The FDA disagreed with the committee, saying in the CRL that patisiran’s clinical meaningfulness had not been established in the proposed indication.
The US FDA is offering sponsors of certain drugs and biologics more agency access as part of a pilot program that will be launching in January 2024 with the mission of accelerating the development of new therapies for rare diseases.
Biopharma companies and industry advocates received the message the U.S. FTC intended to send when it broke new antitrust ground earlier this year in challenging Amgen Inc.’s $27.8 billion acquisition of Horizon Therapeutics plc. Now they’re uniting to send a message of their own – in the guise of an awareness campaign showing that the FTC’s new approach to M&A reviews and antitrust enforcement will undermine the ecosystem responsible for innovative and important therapies the world over.
After considering the evidence, the U.S. FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) voted 14-6 Oct. 4 that the data from a single external-controlled trial and well-established preclinical animal models present sufficient evidence to demonstrate that US Worldmeds LLC’s DFMO (eflornithine) improves event-free survival in pediatric patients with high-risk neuroblastoma.
For the second time in two weeks, the extent of regulatory flexibility will be at the heart of a U.S. FDA advisory committee meeting. The Oct. 4 meeting of the Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) comes exactly a week after the Cellular, Tissue and Gene Therapies Advisory Committee voted overwhelmingly that the evidence presented for Brainstorm Cell Therapeutics Inc.’s amyotrophic lateral sclerosis drug, Nurown (debamestrocel), didn’t meet the agency’s flexibility standard. If the FDA’s briefing document for the ODAC meeting is anything to go by, the outcome for US Worldmeds LLC’s eflornithine, also known as DFMO, could be more positive, even though once again the agency is asking if the evidence from a single trial, along with supportive data, is sufficient.
