Bristol Meyers Squibb Co. (BMS) joined the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) pile-on June 16, filing a third constitutional challenge to the U.S. Medicare drug price negotiations mandated in the law that was narrowly passed last year on a partisan vote.
In its first untitled letter in more than a year, the U.S. FDA’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) took Xeris Biopharma Holdings Inc. to task for two webpages promoting the company’s Recorlev.
In their continuing battle against high prescription drug prices, U.S. lawmakers are firing yet another volley at the middlemen – this time to delink their administrative fees from drug prices. Several members of the Senate Finance Committee, including the leadership, introduced the bipartisan Patients Before Middlemen Act June 14 with the intent of wrapping it into a larger drug pricing legislative package the committee plans to complete over the next few months.
As new and ongoing drug shortages in the U.S. limit patients’ access to essential medicines and life-saving cancer treatments, the blame largely has fallen on increased demand, quality problems, the supply chain and lack of transparency in that chain.
Using his new platform as chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is again pushing the Biden administration to reinstate, and strengthen, a “reasonable pricing clause” in all future research agreements involving government agencies, especially those funding drug R&D.
It didn’t take long for the filing of a second constitutional challenge to the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act’s price negotiations for prescription drugs. In the wake of a similar suit filed three days earlier by Merck & Co. Inc., the Chamber of Commerce filed a complaint June 9 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.
The U.S. FDA’s Antimicrobial Drugs Advisory Committee voted unanimously, 21-0, June 8 in support of Astrazeneca plc’s nirsevimab as a one-dose prophylactic for infants born during or entering their first respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) season.
The question wasn’t if, but when and how, someone would challenge the Medicare negotiation provision laid out in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that was signed into U.S. law last year.
Having already notched approvals in the EU and U.K., Astrazeneca plc hopes to prime the pump for a U.S. approval of nirsevimab as a respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) prophylactic for infants when it makes its case June 8 before the FDA’s Antimicrobial Drugs Advisory Committee.
As Monica Bertagnolli, U.S. President Joe Biden’s choice to be the next NIH director, meets with senators to gather support for her confirmation, she’s sure to be grilled by some of them about her stance on whether the agency can march in on drug patents based on a drug’s list price. Up until now, NIH directors have said no. A change in that policy, along with nearly flatline NIH spending and other new government initiatives, could impact private investment in drug R&D by increasing the cost of research and lowering the return on investment.
