The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a complete response letter (CRL) for Alvotech’s Humira biosimilar AVT02, further delaying the company’s plans to launch the drug in a landmark year. The agency rejected the drug’s biologics licence application (BLA) over deficiencies seen at one of the company’s manufacturing facilities in Reykjavik, Iceland, according to Alvotech’s press release on 28 June. While the FDA did not make a note of any other deficiencies in the BLA, issues related to the Reykjavik facility need to be resolved to facilitate the drug’s potential approval. This marks the second time that the FDA has rejected AVT02’s BLA this year. In April, the regulator issued a CRL to Alvotech, which also noted the deficiencies seen in the company’s Reykjavik plant. Prior to that, the company received a CRL from the FDA over deficiencies in the plant in September 2022. Alvotech plans to resubmit ...
After an initial rejection in 2020 and a review delay earlier this year, BioMarin’s Roctavian has finally got the FDA go-ahead to introduce a gene therapy for a not-so-rare disorder.The FDA has cleared Roctavian as a one-time therapy for adults with severe hemophilia A, BioMarin said Thursday. The news comes seven months after the FDA greenlighted CSL Behring’s hemophilia B gene therapy Hemgenix, which bears a list price of $3.5 million and is currently the most expensive drug in the world. BioMarin is pricing Roctavian at a wholesale acquisition cost of $2.9 million, BioMarin’s chief commercial officer Jeff Ajer said during a call Thursday. It’s also setting up an outcomes-based warranty program. The warranty will reimburse government and commercial payers up to the full cost if Roctavian doesn’t live up to its treatment expectations. Partial reimbursement will be granted if an individual loses response to the therapy in the first four ...
By Elaine Chen STAT – Reporting from the frontiers of health and medicine Liver illustration HYACINTH EMPINADO/STAT SAN DIEGO — The American Diabetes Association said Sunday that all adults with type 2 diabetes or prediabetes should be screened for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, an increasingly prevalent condition that can lead to serious liver damage. There are no approved medications for the disease, but among available diabetes drugs, the ADA singled out GLP-1 treatments as an option doctors could consider, according to recommendations published during the annual ADA conference. GLP-1 treatments, such as Ozempic and Mounjaro, are a class of drugs that have grown widely popular for their efficacy not only in lowering blood sugar, but also cutting weight. Drugmakers have started to study them in liver disease, and while some trials have shown they may offer some benefits, they haven’t yet been shown to improve harmful liver scarring. The ADA ...
By Heather McKenzie https://www.biospace.com/ Pictured: FDA sign in front of a brown brick building/Adobe Stock, Grandbrothers Sarepta’s Elevidys, approved Thursday as the first gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, has been priced at $3.2 million per patient, making it one of the world’s most expensive medicines. The price, announced Thursday following the FDA’s decision, is second in the U.S. only to that of uniQure and CSL Behring’s hemophilia B therapy Hemgenix, approved late last year, which costs $3.5 million per patient, according to BioPharma Dive. On a conference call, Sarepta CEO Doug Ingram said the price reflected a “conservative” approach to valuing the therapy’s benefits to patients and their families, BioPharma Dive reported. Sarepta expects that discounts through Medicaid or a 340B program will make the net price of Elevidys about 20% lower than its gross cost. Original story published June 22 Sarepta’s Elevidys, approved Thursday, is now one of ...
Fever was found to be the most common non-respiratory feature of infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, according to research published at the ATS 2023 International Conference. The finding held true regardless of which COVID variant patients had, and whether or not they were fully vaccinated or not fully vaccinated. The researchers, who also looked at mortality risk, found that patients who were not fully vaccinated had a higher risk of dying when infected with either the Omicron or Delta variant. The study was based on the examination of the University of California Health Covid Research Data Set’s (UC CORDS) medical records of 63,454 patients who had been treated in a University of California medical center for COVID-19. The scientists applied statistical tests to determine the relationship between non-respiratory features, vaccination status and differences in mortality between infection with the Omicron and Delta variants. We determined that we ...
Kyle LaHucik May Associate Editor A few months after the FDA approved the weight loss drug Wegovy for adolescents, researchers are out with a post-hoc look at the late-stage data, this time finding that 45% of the teens taking Novo Nordisk’s drug dipped below the clinical cutoff for obesity. The analysis, presented by University of Minnesota pediatrics professor Aaron Kelly at this week’s European Congress on Obesity in Dublin, gives new insight into the popular drug, which is part of the ballooning obesity R&D field that has Novo and Eli Lilly in the lead and biopharmas like Amgen and Boehringer Ingelheim racing to catch up. The results from the same study, the STEP TEENS trial, were published in the New England Journal of Medicine last December, shortly before the FDA expanded the original 2021 label for adults to include teens 12 years old and older. Almost three-quarters (74%) of teens ...
Months after the U.S. and European approvals of its CSL-partnered hemophilia A gene therapy Hemgenix, uniQure is selling some royalty rights for up to $400 million. In a deal with HealthCare Royalty (HCRx) and Sagard Healthcare, uniQure agreed to part ways with a portion of its Hemgenix royalty rights. The company previously licensed the drug to Australia’s CSL Behring, and it’s entitled to milestone and royalty payments as the launch progresses. Now, though, it’s trading some of those royalty rights for a quick payday. Under the new deal with HCRx and Sagard Healthcare, uniQure will get $375 million upfront and another $25 million if an undisclosed sales threshold is achieved. The cash lets uniQure “continue to invest” in its adeno-associated virus vector gene therapy pipeline, CEO Matt Kapusta said a statement. The pipeline includes a Huntington’s disease prospect, a refractory temporal lobe epilepsy candidate and an SOD-1 amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ...
As GSK’s July court date nears for a key Zantac trial in California, the company can wipe its hands of at least one Canadian class action suit. The company said in a Friday statement that it “welcomes the decision” of the British Columbia Supreme Court to dismiss a proposed class action suit on behalf of Canadian Zantac users. A Vancouver man filed the lawsuit in 2020, alleging that his use of the heartburn med from 2018 to 2019 caused him to develop cancer. His complaint named more than a dozen companies as defendants, including Sandoz Canada and GSK. But the court dismissed the case due to “the uncontroverted evidence that neither ranitidine nor NDMA are reliably associated with increased cancer risk,” GSK said in its statement. Zantac is ranitidine’s brand name and much of the Zantac cases revolve around reports of N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) contamination in the products. Health Canada started investigating the potential impurity in ...
Real-time patient experiences is the missing element to most electronic health records, artificial intelligence, and machine learning models today. Anish Patankar, SVP, GM, Oncology Informatics Software, Elekta Cancer treatment has come a long way in recent years and is now evolving more rapidly through the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as machine learning (ML). Currently, health data exists in many forms, including electronic health records (EHR), diagnostic images, genomic and molecular data, pharmacological data, and patient-reported data. The creation of state-of-the-art cancer treatments can be enhanced by the ways clinicians leverage data to optimize care, and there’s no better way to achieve this than through the use of AI. Completing the picture There is a missing element to most EHR, AI, and ML models today – real-time patient-reported outcomes. This type of data refers to information regarding patients’ experiences with their medical conditions, treatments, and healthcare providers, ...
Daniel M. Keller, PhD Among patients with atrial fibrillation (AF), initiation of statins soon after diagnosis was protective against stroke and related vascular events, and longer duration of use was associated with greater protection, a new cohort study shows. Statin use was associated with lower risks of ischemic stroke or systemic embolism, hemorrhagic stroke, and transient ischemic attack (TIA), regardless of whether patients were also taking anticoagulant medications. Lead author Jiayi Huang, a PhD student at Hong Kong University at Shenzhen Hospital, Shenzhen, China, concluded that the study’s findings support the use of statins to prevent stroke for patients with new-onset AF. “The findings have important clinical implications, particularly given that in atrial fibrillation, patients’ ischemic strokes are often fatal or disabling and have a high risk of recurrence,” she said. The results were presented in a moderated poster session at the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) 2023 in Barcelona and are available online. Widely Prescribed Anticoagulant ...
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