Pictured: Sign of U.S. Department of Health & Human Services at its headquarters in Washington/iStock, JHVEPhoto The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will now provide broader coverage for Eisai and Biogen’s Alzheimer’s disease therapy Leqembi (lecanemab), the federal agency announced Thursday. The Medicare coverage expansion comes after Leqembi won the FDA’s traditional approval, making it the first anti-amyloid and disease-altering treatment to do so. Eisai and Biogen were granted accelerated approval for Leqembi in January and soon commenced their bid for full approval with data from the Phase III Clarity-AD study. According to CMS, only patients enrolled in Medicare and with physicians participating in a qualified registry will be eligible for reimbursement—provided their doctors collect their data as real-world evidence for Leqembi and submit it to a registry. Coverage is restricted to those who are diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment or mild Alzheimer’s disease dementia, with evidence of beta-amyloid deposits in the brain. “With FDA’s decision, CMS will ...
Pictured: Novo Nordisk building in California/iStock, hapabapa Thursday, Novo Nordisk filed legal complaints against three pharmacies in Florida and one in Tennessee for allegedly selling products that contain semaglutide, the active compound in the company’s best-selling weight-loss and diabetes drugs Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus, Bloomberg reported. Novo filed three separate lawsuits in Florida federal court, targeting three compounding pharmacies: WellHealth, TruLife Pharmacy and Brooksville Pharmaceuticals. A fourth lawsuit was filed in Tennessee against DCA Pharmacy. The Danish drugmaker is asking the courts to block these pharmacies from marketing their semaglutide-containing products and is seeking unspecified financial damages. This latest round of lawsuits comes two weeks after Novo sent out a barrage of legal complaints against wellness and weight loss clinics, medical spas and other compounding pharmacies, also claiming that these businesses were selling products containing semaglutide. Semaglutide is a peptide that mimics the GLP-1 hormone to active its counterpart receptor. In turn, this induces the pancreas to secrete ...
PacBio, a leading developer of high-quality, highly accurate sequencing solutions, today announced that Bioscientia is using its Revio long-read sequencing system to expand its genomics research projects and sequence several thousand human genomes per year. Part of Sonic Healthcare Group, Bioscientia is a leading global provider of clinical laboratory testing services for diagnostics based in Germany. The increased accuracy, read length and methylation insights offered by the Revio system will enable Bioscientia to explore certain monogenic disorders, such as deafness, blindness, and developmental delay, and study the underlying causes of rare diseases. “Bioscientia is a world-leading provider of testing services, and we are thrilled that they have chosen Revio to explore the potential clinical use of long-read sequencing,” said Christian Henry, President and Chief Executive Officer of PacBio. “Revio will help enable Bioscientia to deliver more insights to families with fewer tests, lower overall costs, and less time spent ...
PrecisionLife, a leading techbio company driving precision medicine in complex chronic diseases, announced today a data access agreement with the University of Oxford to license the Oxford Endometriosis Gene (OXEGENE) dataset with the aim to develop new personalized treatments for endometriosis patients. Endometriosis is a chronic disease associated with severe pain and infertility. It affects 10% of women globally, but how and why it develops is unknown. On average it takes over 7 years for patients to receive a diagnosis and there are currently no approved diagnostic biomarkers or cures for the disease. The OXEGENE dataset contains anonymized genotype data including disease stage and infertility status, from 1,000 surgically confirmed patients. PrecisionLife’s combinatorial analytics platform is unique in its ability to analyze patient data to better understand the causes of complex chronic disease and achieve mechanistic patient stratification to enable precision medicine where it has not previously been ...
Sales of the Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi may be slow initially due to logistical requirements but could pick up in 2024, analysts said after the groundbreaking treatment won approval in the U.S. Wall Street is chewing over the Food and Drug Administration’s Thursday approval of Leqembi – a milestone in the treatment of the disease, even though the drug isn’t a cure. Leqembi, from drugmakers Eisai and Biogen, is the first medicine proven to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s in people at the early stages of the memory-robbing disease. Medicare on Thursday announced it is now covering the antibody treatment for patients enrolled in the insurance program for seniors, broadening access for those who can’t afford the drug’s hefty $26,500-a-year price tag. But coverage comes with several conditions. Analysts believe certain Medicare requirements and new guidance on Leqembi’s prescription label could potentially weigh on sales of the ...
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has awarded priority review for Astellas Pharma’s biologics licence application (BLA) for zolbetuximab to treat gastric cancer patients. Zolbetuximab is an investigational monoclonal antibody that acts on Claudin 18.2 (CLDN18.2). It is intended for use as a first-line therapy for HER2-negative gastric or gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) adenocarcinoma that is locally advanced, unresectable or metastatic, with tumours that are CLDN18.2-positive. Zolbetuximab is the first treatment targeting CLDN18.2 to be offered in the region for such patients. A decision on the approval by the regulatory agency is anticipated on 12 January 2024. The application is based on the Phase III SPOTLIGHT and GLOW clinical trial findings. Zolbetuximab was assessed along with a regimen comprising oxaliplatin, leucovorin and fluorouracil (mFOLFOX6) in the SPOTLIGHT trial. The GLOW trial analysed zolbetuximab in combination with a chemotherapy regimen comprising capecitabine and oxaliplatin (CAPOX). Astellas immuno-oncology development ...
As demand skyrockets for GLP-1 drugs that can trigger significant weight loss, unauthorized versions of the treatments have started to fill pharmacies. In late May, the FDA warned of illegal knockoffs of Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy. Now, five weeks later, the Danish company has filed its second wave of lawsuits against pharmacies in the U.S. that are producing the copycats. Thursday, in federal courts in Florida and Tennessee, the company accused four companies of making compounded versions of its products that are not approved by the FDA. “Testing new drugs and obtaining the regularly acquired regulatory approval to sell them are time-consuming and very costly,” Novo said in its complaints. “Ignoring drug-approval requirements provides defendant an unfair competitive advantage over pharmaceutical manufacturers like Novo Nordisk. Worse, it puts patients at risk by exposing them to drugs that have not been shown to be safe or effective.” The defendants are compounding ...
Cipla, which was recently hit with a 23-page Form 483 filing from the FDA, is adding to the albuterol supply strain with a U.S. recall of six batches of the asthma med.The company’s voluntary recall of albuterol sulfate inhalation aerosol is a result of a container defect, Cipla said in a filing with the Bombay Stock Exchange. Specifically, a market complaint flagged leakage in one inhaler, the company said. The leak was spotted in the inhaler valve, leading Cipla to pull all of the lots of the drug that used that same batch of valves from U.S. shelves. The company made the move “out of an abundance of caution,” it noted in the release. The lots were manufactured in November of 2021 and expire this November. “Cipla maintains stringent quality processes to assess quality defects and safety issues,” the company said in the filing. “Cipla conducts regular investigation and assessment by committees consisting ...
A study led by Nagoya University in Japan has identified three previously unknown membrane proteins in ovarian cancer. Using a unique technology consisting of nanowires with a polyketone coating, the group succeeded in capturing the proteins, demonstrating a new detection method for identification of ovarian cancer. The study is published in the journal Science Advances. The discovery of new biomarkers is important for detecting ovarian cancer, as the disease is difficult to detect in its early stages where it can most easily be treated. One approach to detecting cancer is to look for extracellular vesicles (EVs), especially small proteins released from the tumor called exosomes. As these proteins are found outside the cancer cell, they can be isolated from body fluids, such as blood, urine, and saliva. However, the use of these biomarkers is hindered by the lack of reliable ones for the detection of ovarian cancer. A research group led by ...
An estimated 50 million individuals in the United States struggle with the challenges of cocaine or alcohol use disorders, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Beyond the well-documented health risks, addiction to these substances detrimentally affects our cognitive flexibility, which is the ability to adapt and switch between different tasks or strategies. Although previous research has hinted at this connection, the underlying reasons for this cognitive impairment remain elusive. Cognitive flexibility is a crucial element in various domains of our life, including academic achievement, employment success and transitioning into adulthood. As we age, this flexibility plays an important role in mitigating cognitive decline. A deficiency in cognitive flexibility, however, is linked to academic deficits and a lower quality of life. A study led by Dr. Jun Wang, associate professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Experimental Therapeutics at the Texas A&M University School of Medicine, provides new insight into the ...
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