Three top biopharma companies are seeking more details from the FDA on how the agency conducts its benefit-risk assessments for new drugs and biologics.
While Pfizer, Amgen and Janssen praised the agency for further spelling out its thinking on the subject in a new draft guidance, including a discussion of patient experience data as part of the assessment, the companies said the FDA could’ve included more specifics in the 20-page draft document.
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While oncology researchers have long pursued the potential of cellular immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer, it was unclear whether these therapies would ever reach patients due to the complexity of manufacturing and costs of development. Fortunately, the recent successful development and regulatory approval of chimeric antigen receptor-engineered T (CAR-T) cells have demonstrated the significant benefit of these therapies to patients.
Janet Woodcock (AP Images)
Acting FDA commissioner Janet Woodcock has been the face of just about every drug approval decision at the agency since the turn of the century. Since the pandemic began, she’s moved between the top of the drugs center to the head of therapeutics at Operation Warp Speed, leading the drive for work on Covid-targeted mAbs and antivirals.
Looking forward — and pending a quick Senate confirmation to cement Rob Califf’s return to the top of FDA early next year — Woodcock’s role at the agency will again be in flux.
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Discovery Life Sciences has acquired what claims to be the Maryland-based host of the world’s largest hepatocyte inventory, known as IVAL, to help researchers select more effective and safer drug candidates in the future.
The combined companies will now serve a wider range of drug research and development scientists, according to Albert Li, who founded IVAL in 2004 and is set to join the Discovery leadership team as the CSO of pharmacology and toxicology.
Richard Pazdur (via AACR)
Outside of Covid-19, 2021 has been the year of the accelerated approval.
Beginning last spring, FDA openly challenged six ‘dangling’ accelerated approvals (hadn’t confirmed their clinical benefit yet), three of which were later pulled by the companies.
Then in June, FDA pulled out the accelerated approval pathway, seemingly out of nowhere, to sign off on Biogen’s controversial Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm. It hadn’t even been mentioned at the drug’s adcomm.
Researchers may be nearing an answer for the mysterious and life-threatening blood clots that appeared on very rare occasions in people who received the J&J or AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.
The new work builds on an early hypothesis researchers in Norway put forward last spring, when the cases first cropped up. They proposed the events were similar to blood clots that can occur in a small subset of patients who receive heparin, one of the most commonly used blood thinners.
Ed Kaye, Stoke Therapeutics CEO
Two and a half years after driving his antisense oligonucleotide platform to Wall Street, Stoke Therapeutics CEO Ed Kaye is painting a fuller picture of the company’s first clinical data. And though the trial wasn’t powered to detect statistical significance, Kaye says the readout shows early signs of efficacy in kids with a rare, drug-resistant form of epilepsy
STK-001 was well-tolerated in single and multiple doses in 22 Dravet syndrome patients between the ages of 2 and 18 years old, Stoke announced on Friday. What’s more, 12 of the 17 evaluable patients at the time (70.6%) saw reductions from baseline in convulsive seizure frequency, according to the company.
Merck’s new antiviral molnupiravir (Quality Stock Arts / Shutterstock)
After South African scientists reported a new Covid-19 variant — dubbed Omicron by the WHO — scientists became concerned about how effective vaccines and monoclonal antibodies might be against it, which has more than 30 mutations in the spike protein.
‘I think it is super worrisome,’ Dartmouth professor and Adagio co-founder and CEO Tillman Gerngross told Endpoints News this weekend. Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel echoed similar concerns, telling the Financial Times that experts warned him, ‘This is not going to be good.’
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Novartis is plopping down $150 million in cash to pick up an experimental Parkinson’s drug and grab an option to another, a move that puts it on an increasingly popular path in the field’s search for disease-modifying therapies.
Belgium’s UCB is its partner of choice, supplying two small molecule alpha-synuclein misfolding inhibitors in a deal that can add up to nearly $1.5 billion.
Out of the pair, UCB0599 is already in Phase II trials, making Novartis confident enough to pull the trigger on co-development and commercialization, including to foot half of the R&D bill. The pharma giant will make a decision on UCB7853 once UCB wraps the ongoing Phase I program.
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China’s National Reimbursement Drug List (NRDL) is a crystal clear example of the country’s bargaining power in the biotech and pharma market, as more firms have reportedly agreed to cut their prices for 67 new medicines to be included in its national medical insurance coverage starting in January.
Being on the list is lucrative. Essentially, if a biotech or pharma company gets on this list, they’re covered by the biggest insurance network in the country. Given China’s vast population, the Chinese government has significant leverage to decide which medicines can make a profit. While domestic drugmakers are quite willing to play that game, cutting prices significantly in exchange for getting on the list, international companies don’t do it as often.
https://endpts.com/pfizer-amgen-and-janssen-seek-further-clarity-on-fdas-new-benefit-risk-guidance/
