If the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. vs. Glaxosmithkline LLC, it could be one of the biggest biopharma cases on the court’s calendar in the coming year. But that’s still an if. Whether the patent infringement case involving a so-called “skinny label” makes it to the high court’s docket depends on which interpretation of the underlying question the court accepts.
A dozen years after the Dodd-Frank Act was signed into U.S. law, the SEC adopted a final rule Aug. 25 implementing the law’s so-called “pay-vs.-performance” provisions related to executive compensation.
It’s that time of year when the U.S. Trade Representative asks for help as it prepares its list of notorious markets for counterfeiting and piracy. While it’s not exhaustive, the annual list is composed of online and physical markets around the world that deal in commercial-scale counterfeiting and piracy across all sectors, including biopharma and med tech.
Moderna Inc.’s and Pfizer Inc.-Biontech SE’s COVID-19 bivalent boosters could be coming to the U.S. in the first week or so of September – even though the U.S. FDA just received the completed emergency use authorization (EUA) requests for the vaccines this week. The CDC is already taking pre-orders from providers, states and other jurisdictions for the yet-to-be authorized booster doses as part of its fall-winter booster campaign strategy. It also scheduled a Sept. 1-2 meeting of its Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, signaling that it expects the FDA to grant the EUAs by the end of August.
While other COVID-19 vaccine makers are developing bivalent boosters comprising the original SARS-CoV-2 strain and an omicron variant, Russia’s Gamaleya National Research Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology is trekking a different course. Leaving behind the ancestral strain, Gamaleya’s next generation of the Sputnik V vaccine has been specifically adapted against delta and omicron variants of the coronavirus.
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s Inmazeb and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP’s Ebanga earned a ringing endorsement from the World Health Organization (WHO) in its first ever guideline on Ebola therapies. In releasing the guideline Aug. 19, WHO officials celebrated the fact that Ebola is no longer “a near certain killer” – provided treatment starts as soon as possible following diagnosis.
After nearly four decades as director of the U.S. NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), 81-year-old Anthony Fauci will be stepping down in December. He also announced Aug. 22 that he will be handing over the reins as chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation and as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden.
It pays to read the details of patent specifications. By keeping the pH range of its generic vasopressin injection at least 0.01 below that specified for Vasostrict, Eagle Pharmaceuticals Inc. cleared itself from claims that it had infringed two key patents protecting the brand drug.
An Emergent Biosolutions Inc. facility in Baltimore is under U.S. FDA scrutiny after a February 2022 inspection revealed manufacturing problems, some of which resulted in multiple customer complaints.
Regardless of the grading scale, the U.S. NIH would have gotten an “F” for its failure to ensure that intramural and extramural clinical trials it funded complied with government reporting requirements in 2019 and 2020.
