Pharmaceutical Executive Editorial Staff Adjuvant treatment with Moderna’s mRNA-4157 (V940) in combination with Merck’s Keytruda lowered the risk of recurrence or death by 49% compared with Keytruda monotherapy. Findings from the KEYNOTE-942/mRNA-4157-P201 clinical trial show that Moderna’s investigational individualized neoantigen therapy plus Merck’s Keytruda (pembrolizumab) lowered the risk of death or relapse by nearly half in patients with resected high-risk melanoma (stage III/IV) following complete resection. A planned analysis of the Phase IIb randomized trial found that at a median follow-up of approximately three years, adjuvant treatment with Moderna’s mRNA-4157 (V940) in combination with Keytruda continued to show a clinically meaningful improvement in recurrence-free survival (RFS) by lowering the risk of recurrence or death by 49% compared with Keytruda monotherapy. “As we continue to follow participants in the KEYNOTE-942/mRNA-4157-P201 study, we are excited to see such a robust clinical benefit with mRNA-4157 (V940) as adjuvant treatment in combination with Keytruda ...
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 ...
Pharmaceutical Executive Editorial Staff If approved by the FDA, Xolair would be the first drug indicated to lower allergic reactions to multiple foods after an accidental exposure, including peanut, milk, and egg allergies. The FDA has granted Priority Review to Genentech’s supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) for Xolair (omalizumab) for the treatment of allergic reactions, such as anaphylaxis, that may result from an accidental exposure to one or more foods in patients aged 1 year and older with a food allergy. If the FDA approves the application, Xolair would be the first drug indicated to lower allergic reactions to multiple foods after an accidental exposure. Roche said it expects the FDA to decide on the approval in the first quarter of 2024. “Despite the significant and growing health burden from food allergies, treatment advances have been limited,” said Levi Garraway, MD, PhD, Genentech’s chief medical officer and head of Global ...
It’s time to build the infrastructure needed to scale up inhaled gene therapies targeting cystic fibrosis, and to bolster investment that supports several key program components. By JOAN LAU Thanks to simultaneous achievements in gene therapy and medicine delivery platforms, new solutions to intractable problems are bringing us to a real watershed moment in the treatment of respiratory disease. This synchronicity of science and tech advancements is no accident; along with colleagues in my own and other organizations, I have been working for the past several years on the medical and technological leaps that together signal hope for respiratory-disease patients with unmet need. This is especially true for those with cystic fibrosis (CF), for whom the standard of care is in urgent need of update. And now that we have the science and the technology in place, we must push to scale-up efforts; patients are waiting. Right now, CF patients ...
EMA and the Heads of Medicines Agencies (HMAs) have published an Artificial Intelligence (AI) workplan to 2028, setting out a collaborative and coordinated strategy to maximise the benefits of AI to stakeholders while managing the risks. The workplan will help the European medicines regulatory network (EMRN) to embrace the opportunities of AI for personal productivity, automating processes and systems, increasing insights into data and supporting more robust decision-making to benefit public and animal health. The AI workplan, prepared under the joint HMA-EMA Big Data Steering Group (BDSG), ensures the EMRN remains at the forefront in benefiting from AI in medicines regulation. The workplan was adopted by EMA’s Management Board at its December meeting. The field of AI is developing swiftly. Pharmaceutical companies increasingly use AI-powered tools in research, development and monitoring of medicines. National competent authorities are responding to the new opportunities and challenges by starting to use and develop ...
Dive Brief Medtronic will pay Cosmo Intelligent Medical Devices $100 million upfront to expand a partnership that makes Medtronic the exclusive global distributor of Cosmo’s GI Genius platform. GI Genius received de novo clearance in 2021 and uses machine learning to flag regions of interest during a colonoscopy, helping physicians detect lesions, such as polyps or suspected tumors. In addition, Medtronic said it would pay a double-digit royalty on net sales and another $100 million in milestone payments that it expects the partnership to reach by the end of 2024. Dive Insight Medtronic first started working with Cosmo Intelligent Medical Devices, a subsidiary of Cosmo Pharmaceuticals, in 2019. When the Food and Drug Administration cleared GI Genius a few years later, the agency said it was the first device that used machine learning to help clinicians detect lesions in the colon. Now, Cosmo and Medtronic are expanding their partnership, including ...
Several pharmaceutical industry advocacy and lobby organisations have bandied together to release a joint industry statement supporting the Declaration on Climate and Health released at the ongoing COP28 meeting. The joint statement is from associations in Europe, US, Canada, and Japan, like the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), as well as The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) which represents over 90 pharmaceutical companies worldwide. The declaration highlights the negative impacts of climate change on health, and details objectives to ensure better health outcomes, such as implementing adaptation interventions against climate-sensitive disease and health risks. The aim of the declaration is to strengthen the implementation of policies to protect populations most vulnerable to the health impact of climate change. The COP 28 meeting is an international gathering of national leaders, regulators, ...
Boehringer Ingelheim and IBM have announced a partnership aimed at advancing generative artificial intelligence (AI) and foundation models for therapeutic antibody development. The collaboration agreement will see Boehringer use an IBM-developed, pre-trained AI model that will be “further fine-tuned” on the German drugmaker’s specific proprietary data to help accelerate the pace at which it can create new antibody therapeutics. The companies noted that, despite “major” technological advances, the discovery and development of therapeutic antibodies against diverse targets remains a “highly complex and time-consuming process”. IBM’s foundation model technologies, which have already shown success in generating biologics and small molecules with relevant target affinities, are used to design antibody candidates for specific disease targets. These are then screened with AI-enhanced simulation to select and refine the best binders for the target. Boehringer Ingelheim outlined that it will produce small quantities of the candidates that can be tested experimentally. Andrew Nixon, global ...
Culmination Bio has secured $10m in investment from the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund (venture capital arm of MSD) and Amgen Ventures to develop an intelligence platform to facilitate diagnostic and therapeutic development. The US-based company has a library of multimodal and longitudinal data along with the accompanying biospecimens, Culmination Bio’s CEO Lincoln Nadauld told Pharmaceutical Technology. The data for Culmination’s library consists of de-identified HIPPA-compliant data from Intermountain Health. This allows the company to “identify specific patient cohorts and proactively or prospective rapidly recruit them”, which can accelerate drug discovery and clinical trial recruitment. Nadauld said that having biospecimens is instrumental in validating diagnostic devices, adding: “An example would be a liquid biopsy company validating their novel technology in the liquid biopsy space, for cancer. They often need fresh samples from patients with defined diseases, and we can deliver not only the biospecimens but the accompanying multimodal data that ...
AstraZeneca’s rare disease unit has received a recommendation from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) for the use of its enzyme replacement therapy in infants with Wolman disease. Alexion’s Kanuma (sebelipase alfa), which has been specifically recommended for use in patients who are aged two years or younger when administration begins, will now become the first treatment available on the NHS for the rapidly-progressive rare genetic disease. Occurring in around one in 350,000 births, Wolman disease causes a build-up of fat in cells in the liver, heart, blood vessels and digestive system. Symptoms in infants include enlarged liver and spleen, poor weight gain, low muscle tone, jaundice, vomiting, diarrhoea, developmental delay and anaemia. Until now, standard care for the disease has been palliative and limited to managing symptoms, with patients normally not surviving past the age of one without treatment. Administered as weekly intravenous infusions which can ...
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