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The House-approved 21st Century Cures legislation supports initiatives for medical research, drug development, and faster approvals, but comes up short on actual appropriations.

What’s ahead for the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries?

Teva and IBM expanded their partnership to focus on drug development and chronic disease management.

FDA’s new Office of Tissues and Advanced Therapies will oversee a growing range of cellular and genetic products.

The companies are collaborating on the commercialization of two biosimilar candidates in the US and Canada.

Pfizer announced its decision to remain one company after debating the possibility of splitting Pfizer Innovative Health and Pfizer Essential Health into two, separate publicly traded companies.

Walmsley will succeed Andrew Witty as CEO of the British drug maker.

The department gave Moderna $8.2 million to accelerate development of an mRNA-based Zika vaccine.

The initiative targets countries with less developed and evolving healthcare systems such as Latin America, South East Asia, and Africa.

Pfizer will acquire Medivation for approximately $14 billion.

The debate over who has control over patents for CRISPR gene-editing technology came to a head on August 17, 2016 after an email was released from a former graduate student at the Broad Institute accusing Harvard-MIT of wrongfully securing patents to the technology.

A KPMG survey reveals that approximately 84% of pharma and medical device executives plan to add jobs in next 12 months.

The NIH has launched a Phase I clinical trial in humans of an investigational Zika vaccine.

The Phase I trial will test Bavarian Nordic’s vaccine, which is manufactured using a vaccine vector based on smallpox.

John C. Lechleiter will step down from his post as CEO of Eli Lilly effective December 31, 2016.

The vaccine candidate has also won a Priority Medicines (PRIME) status from EMA.

Amgen and Allergan’s biosimilar to popular breast cancer drug Herceptin is comparable to the innovator molecule, Amgen recently announced.

A new website collects and rates information about life-science supplies from academic journals to simplify researcher purchasing decisions.

Thirty percent of current Remicade patients could be eligible for a switch to competitors such as Inflectra, according to estimates, although J&J doubts this will occur in the United States in 2016.

On July 19, 2016, Pfizer announced that the World Health Organization (WHO) has prequalified its four-dose, multi-dose vial (MDV) presentation of Prevenar 13 (pneumococcal polysaccharide conjugate vaccine [13 – valent, adsorbed]). According to the company, WHO prequalification allows for the global use of Prevenar 13 MDV by the United Nations agencies and countries worldwide that require WHO prequalification.The MDV presentation of Prevenar 13 offers benefits to developing countries, including a 75% reduction in:

EAG Laboratories announces new company identity and intent to expand testing, analysis, and characterization capabilities across multiple markets.

Patheon launches initial public offering to repay outstanding notes and expenses.

FDA said in briefing documents ahead of a July 13, 2016 meeting that Sandoz’s biosimilar GP2015 has “no clinically meaningful differences” with the US-licensed and EU-licensed versions of Enbrel (etanercept) in terms of safety, purity, and potency.

Biosimilar makers may have to wait an additional 180 days after receiving FDA approval before they can bring their drugs to market, according to a United States Federal Circuit Court ruling. On July 5, 2016 the court ruled in Amgen v. Apotex that after a biosimilar receives FDA approval, companies must notify reference product sponsors and wait 180 days before bringing the drug to market, a requirement in the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act.

The agency says, for now, it’s business as usual.The European Medicines Agency (EMA) says the future location of the agency will be determined by common agreement between representatives of the Member States, according to a July 6, 2016 statement. Until then, EMA says it will be conducting business as usual, and the outcome of the June 23 referendum will not affect the agency’s operations.

The acquisition will give Bristol-Myers Squibb full rights to Cormorant’s HuMax-IL8 antibody program.

Two recently published studies suggest that pre-exposure to the dengue virus (DENV) could predict a person’s reaction to the Zika virus (ZIKV) because of of the antigenic similarity between the viruses. One study was published on June 23, 2016 in Nature Immunology and the other on June 27, 2016 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). Dengue and Zika are both mosquito-borne flaviviruses that are cross-reactive.

The companies agree to exchange ownership of Sanofi’s animal health and Boehringer Ingelheim’s consumer healthcare businesses.

In the wake of Britain’s decision to exit the EU, pharma companies face uncertainty.

A research team associated with Dr. Carl June announces it has discovered a way to engineer a patient’s own immune cells to recognize cancer-specific glycoantigens on tumor cells.