The number of people getting tested over the last decade has increased by 133% The NHS has announced a new analysis showing its highest year on record for providing urgent cancer checks over the last year. Almost three million people in the UK received cancer checks between November 2022 and October 2023. In alignment with the health service’s goal of catching cancer earlier, the new analysis has shown a 133% increase in the number of people getting checked for cancer over the last decade. Between November 2022 and October 2023, over 2.9 million people were seen for urgent cancer checks, an increase of 147,960 people between 2021 and 2022. In October alone, the NHS saw the highest month on record for cancer checks, as well as 269,492 urgent referrals and 192,889 people who received an all-clear or definitive cancer diagnosis. In addition to this, the NHS has made major progress ...
In 2022, fueled by its powerhouse COVID products, Pfizer became the first company in the history of the biopharma industry to top $100 billion in annual revenue. What would the New York drugmaker do for an encore? In 2023, Pfizer went from generating the most sales in the industry to gaining the most approvals. With seven FDA nods in 2023, Pfizer had more than double that of any other company. It’s also more than twice as many as every drugmaker over each of the last three years. You need to go back to 2019, when Novartis scored six approvals, to find a company that approached what Pfizer accomplished in 2023. Pfizer’s splurge included four approvals in a dizzying five weeks in May and June. And all but one of the seven products has been pegged by analysts as a potential blockbuster. Two of the newly approved Pfizer treatments were acquired ...
NFL players aim to boost awareness of Type 1 diabetes under a new charitable campaign. The “My Cause My Cleats” campaign will see NFL players wear custom-painted cleats during some football games to raise awareness and funds for charitable causes. In 2024, Type 1 diabetes has become a core theme, with Mark Andrews of the Baltimore Ravens, Orlando Brown Jr. of the Cincinnati Bengals, Blake Ferguson of the Miami Dolphins, Collin Johnson of the Chicago Bears, Chad Muma of the Jacksonville Jaguars, Nate Peterman of the Chicago Bears, and Kevin Radar of the Tennessee Titans, all lacing up for the cause. More than 1.4 million Americans are affected by Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease that causes the pancreas to produce little or no insulin. The disease typically hits at a young age, and is separate from Type 2 diabetes, which typically affects adults and can be related to obesity. ...
Over the years, shareholders at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) have repeatedly voiced concerns on a variety of subjects to top pharma companies. Now, as 2023 comes to a close, the group is taking pharma giants to task over their patenting strategies and potential human rights shortfalls. In proposals to AbbVie, Eli Lilly, Gilead, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Pfizer, the group is pushing the companies to review how add-on patents for medicines can affect patient access. Additionally, Bristol Myers Squibb, Pfizer and Eli Lilly face calls to review and update their human rights policies. While ICCR has voiced pharma-related complaints plenty of times in the past, its proposals haven’t been met with much enthusiasm by the companies’ larger pools of shareholders. In 2019, for instance, investors at several large pharma companies rejected the group’s proposals to study the potential link between CEO pay and drug prices. In ...
Even with the Federal Trade Commission keeping a watchful eye on the biopharma industry and the economic landscape giving some players pause, mergers and acquisitions are back on the rise. And it is with cautious optimism that industry watchers see the trend continuing in 2024. Wielding plenty of firepower, drugmakers are more likely to make higher-value deals in the new year as they address growth challenges that loom later in the decade because of patent cliffs and the effects of the Inflation Reduction Act. “Executives will continue to deploy cash balances and seek out areas of innovation and clinical differentiation,” PricewaterhouseCoopers wrote in its Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences: U.S. Deals 2024 Outlook. “As regulators’ perspectives on key deal factors become better understood, there may be a return of larger deals, along with continued interest in the $5 billion to $15 billion deals to fill targeted strategic gaps.” Look no further ...
Dive Brief The Food and Drug Administration posted a draft guidance on Monday clarifying how it evaluates real-world data in its decisions to clear or approve medical devices. The draft is an update to a final guidance in 2017 and includes more detail on how the agency assesses the relevance and reliability of real-world data, study design elements and recommendations on documentation for FDA review. An omnibus spending bill passed at the end of 2022 required the FDA to issue a draft guidance on the use of real-world data in premarket submissions. Two years after the public health emergency ended, the law also requires the FDA to specify how many requests for clearance or approval it has received and how many of those applications were approved or denied when real-world evidence was submitted. Dive Insight The 21st Century Cures Act, signed into law in 2016, created a framework for the ...
BY SEAN WHOOLEY The ThermoCool SmartTouch dual-energy ablation catheter could offer a treatment option for AFib. [Image courtesy of Biosense Webster]Johnson & Johnson’s Biosense Webster today announced the first completed patient cases in a study of its dual-energy ablation catheter. Biosense Webster designed the ThermoCool SmartTouch SF to deliver both radiofrequency (RF) and pulsed-field ablation (PFA) energy. The SmartPulse pivotal study evaluates the dual-energy system in the treatment of paroxysmal AFib. AFib ablation has become a hotbed for innovation in recent years. Medtronic stands as one competitor after its $1 billion Affera acquisition, plus the FDA yesterday approved its PulseSelect PFA system for treating AFib. Boston Scientific and its Farapulse system represent another exciting option in the space. The company expects FDA approval sometime next year. Dr. David Newton of Memorial Health University Physicians Heart Care and Dr. Andrea Natale of Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute, St. David’s Medical Center, performed ...
A BMJ investigation has shone a spotlight on the marketing of semaglutide in the U.K., raising questions about the effectiveness of regulatory oversight of materials on the weight loss and diabetes treatment. Novo Nordisk is the marketing authorization holder for semaglutide, the active ingredient in diabetes drug Ozempic and obesity therapy Wegovy, but the results of online searches for the molecule include pharmacy websites unrelated to the drugmaker. The BMJ looked into whether any of those pages break the rules on the advertising of prescription drugs and how authorities in the U.K. respond to allegations of illegal promotion. A complaint filed by academics in the U.K. and Sweden forms the centerpiece of the report. Writing to the U.K. drug regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the academics said they were “appalled” to find Pharmadoctor, a provider of clinical services to pharmacists, was marketing Wegovy “directly to the ...
After many years of tracking the pharmaceutical industry’s pricing tactics, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) is once again placing a spotlight on the price increases that end up costing the U.S. healthcare system the most. In an annual report (PDF) on “unsupported price increases” (UPIs), the independent nonprofit has placed scrutiny on hikes that it says aren’t supported by evidence of new clinical benefit, ranking the medicines by their contributions to excess healthcare spending. This year’s edition saw the return of AbbVie’s superstar Humira, which last year enjoyed a break from the annual list after being included in every other report since the series began in 2019. The fifth annual version, released Monday, evaluates the industry’s pricing moves in 2022. For Humira, 2022 was the last year of market exclusivity before the med’s dive off of the patent cliff. Humira captured ICER’s top spot on its UPI ...
Go to Page Go
your submission has already been received.
OK
Please enter a valid Email address!
Submit
The most relevant industry news & insight will be sent to you every two weeks.