Millions of people stuck at home during the pandemic took on do-it-yourself home projects. Now Merck wants them to turn the tables on themselves and get back to self-care.
The ‘Do it For Yourself’ campaign encourages people to pay attention to potential lung cancer symptoms such as prolonged unexplained cough or continuous shortness of breath.
While health checks dropped precipitously during the pandemic, cancer screenings were especially hard hit. Screenings for lung cancer, which is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the US, decreased by 50% in 2020, said Kristen Drake, Merck executive director, global communications.
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For years, paper-based processes and individual point solutions dominated the clinical research landscape, and patient participation in clinical trials was largely an in-person engagement. But when the COVID-19 pandemic took a stronghold, traditional clinical trial methods emerged as inadequate, putting clinical trials and the life sciences industry at a crossroads. Practically overnight, the industry had to rapidly shift to decentralized clinical trial methods, while maintaining data quality and regulatory compliance.
Chiquita Brooks-LaSure (Photo by Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)
Although sales of Biogen’s expensive new Alzheimer’s drug have been anemic since the approval in June, the prospect of CMS eventually paying for it opens up a billion-dollar can of worms, and already has the agency defending some premium and deductible increases for seniors.
CMS explained late Friday that Medicare Part B will have to increase its standard monthly premium — from $148.50 in 2021 to $170.10 in 2022 — in part because of the massive spending that could occur should the agency sign off on a national coverage decision for the drug, known as Aduhelm, and its $56,000 annual price tag next year.
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Al Sandrock (Biogen via Youtube)
Two years after Al Sandrock jumped from CMO to the top post in R&D — and just months after the hyper-controversial approval of the experimental Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab (Aduhelm) — Sandrock is planning to step out of his long career at Biogen.
Late Monday evening the big biotech put out word that Sandrock, a longtime fixture in the company after a 23-year stint, is hitting the exit.
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Glen de Vries (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
Glen de Vries, the co-founder of the clinical IT software giant Medidata Solutions, died in a plane crash last week.
Emergency crews found the wreckage of a Cessna 172 in a wooded area in northern New Jersey on Thursday. De Vries was an instrument-rated private pilot, though authorities have not yet said who was piloting the plane. He was with his flight instructor Thomas Fischer, 54, and the plane was headed to Sussex Airport from Essex County Airport in Caldwell. He had started his private pilot training with Fischer in February 2016. Fischer opened the flight school with his wife Jodi in March 2012.
Kala Pharmaceuticals continued their transition to a commercial-stage biotech late last year with its second OK after a long slog through the clinic. Now the biotech’s execs are turning to M&A to grow the company.
The Watertown, MA eye-focused biotech announced its acquisition of private ocular biotech Combangio this morning. Combangio, a California biotech which has remained under the radar, was in the middle of developing a secretome therapy — and had recently finished a Phase Ib trial, enrolling 8 patients with persistent corneal epithelial defect, or PCED with positive results.
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Can injecting messenger RNA directly into the heart of patients who’ve experienced heart failure help repair the organ? More than three years after AstraZeneca and Moderna launched a first-of-its-kind Phase II trial to test the idea, the pair has now shown the procedure is at least safe.
In a Phase II trial dubbed EPICCURE, seven were treated with AZD8601 — mRNA-encoding vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF-A) — while four were given placebo. After six months of follow-up, investigators concluded the drug met the primary endpoints on safety and tolerability, while the exploratory efficacy analyses support further clinical evaluation.
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Uğur Şahin, BioNTech CEO (ddp images/Sipa USA/Sipa via AP Images)
For the first time since the pandemic began, BioNTech CEO Uğur Şahin made his way to the US, this time for a cancer drug conference in Washington, DC, last week. Prior to presenting his company’s poster on early, promising data for its CLDN6-targeted CAR-T, Şahin sat down with a small group of reporters and discussed his company’s blockbuster Covid-19 vaccine, and what’s to be expected from the pandemic moving forward.
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Ginkgo CEO Jason Kelly (Photographer: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
A month and a half after a short sell attack nearly brought Ginkgo Bioworks’ newly public shares to its knees, the company on Monday took its largest step to date toward clearing its name. But it also revealed it’s currently the target of a Department of Justice probe.
Ginkgo received an ‘informal inquiry’ from the DOJ connected to the short sell report, released last month by hedge fund Scorpion Capital, the company said during Monday’s third quarter earnings call. CEO Jason Kelly told analysts Ginkgo is ‘cooperating’ with regulators, suggesting the investigation remains ongoing.
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https://endpts.com/merck-applies-diy-mindset-to-cancer-screenings-adding-to-industry-post-pandemic-efforts/
