AstraZeneca-partnered Enhertu has become a bright spot in Daiichi Sankyo’s business, and the Japanese pharma has again increased its sales projection for the HER2-directed antibody-drug conjugate. But this time, the rosier outlook reflects developments outside the U.S. Daiichi now expects Enhertu sales to come in at 383.9 billion Japanese yen (about $2.6 billion) for the 12 months ending March 31. The number includes profits from regions where AstraZeneca books Enhertu sales. Daiichi had already once dialed up its Enhertu forecast for its current fiscal year. The drugmaker’s projection was originally 320 billion yen back in April 2023, then Daiichi raised it to 381.7 billion yen in October. Despite rolling out the higher global forecast, Daichii actually reduced Enhertu’s 12-month sales estimate in the U.S. by $30 million to $1.58 billion. For the first nine months of the company’s fiscal year, Enhertu generated $1.14 billion in the U.S., an increase of ...
Approximately only half of cancer patients see a positive response to treatments, with the remaining experiencing inadequate outcomes. The high costs and potential adverse reactions of treatments make it crucial for clinicians to quickly determine their effectiveness, or if an alternative therapy is more suitable. Presently, it can take weeks or months to fully gauge the success of cancer treatment, typically using CT scans to measure significant size changes in tumors. While tumor biopsies offer more precise data, their infrequency limits the ability to provide ongoing updates. As a solution, many clinicians are now resorting to liquid biopsies, which involve testing for cancer indicators in a patient’s blood, like tumor-shed cancer cells. However, these tests require sufficiently high cell levels for detection. This is particularly challenging in lung cancer, where some FDA-approved methods for detecting blood-borne cancer cells are ineffective, often due to targeting a single, less common protein in ...
Ovarian cancer, often termed the silent killer, typically presents no symptoms in its initial stages, leading to late detection when treatment becomes challenging. The stark contrast in survival rates highlights the urgent need for early diagnosis: while late-stage ovarian cancer patients have a five-year survival rate of around 31% post-treatment, early detection and treatment can raise this rate to over 90%. Despite over three decades of research, developing an accurate early diagnostic test for ovarian cancer has proved challenging. This difficulty stems from the disease’s molecular origins, where multiple pathways can lead to the same cancer type. Scientists at the Georgia Tech Integrated Cancer Research Center (ICRC, Atlanta, GA, USA) have now made a breakthrough by integrating machine learning with blood metabolite information, developing a test that can detect ovarian cancer with 93% accuracy in their study group. This test outperforms existing detection methods, especially in identifying early-stage ovarian disease ...
Hong Kong, Shanghai & Florham Park, NJ — Tuesday, January 30, 2024: HUTCHMED (China) Limited (Nasdaq/AIM:HCM, HKEX:13) (“HUTCHMED”) today announces that the marketing approval of ELUNATE® (fruquintinib) by the Pharmacy and Poisons Board of Hong Kong for the treatment of adult patients with previously treated metastatic colorectal cancer (“CRC”). ELUNATE® is a selective oral inhibitor of vascular endothelial growth factor (“VEGF”) receptors -1, -2 and -3, which play a pivotal role in blocking tumor angiogenesis. This marks the first medicine to be approved under the new mechanism for registration of new drugs (“1+” mechanism) announced by the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (“SAR”) in October last year. The mechanism officially commenced on November 1, 2023. It allows drugs which are beneficial for treatment of life-threatening or severely debilitating diseases to apply for registration for use in Hong Kong, if they have supporting local clinical data and recognition ...
A nasal gel version of the motion sickness drug scopolamine has failed to make the grade with the FDA. The U.S. regulator has sent a complete response letter (CRL) to Defender Pharmaceuticals, rejecting DPI-396 for the prevention of nausea and vomiting induced by motion. Barry Feinberg, M.D., the CEO of Defender, a privately held St. Louis company, said in a release that the firm will schedule a meeting with the FDA so it can “understand the issues raised in the CRL so we can develop and implement a comprehensive action plan.” “We remain confident that our intranasal scopolamine is a safe and effective therapy,” Feinberg added. In 2012, the NASA teamed with Irvine, California-based Epiomed Therapeutics to develop a nasal spray version of scopolamine. Astronauts often experience motion sickness in space. Two years later, Defender purchased Epiomed, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Also working to develop the treatment has ...
When the Biden administration welcomed the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August 2022, it marked a rare defeat for the pharmaceutical industry in Washington, D.C. Naturally, drugmakers didn’t lie down without a fight on the controversial topic of Medicare price negotiations. Now, new developments show that the Biden administration is willing to go to the mat in defense of the IRA negotiations. Wednesday, lawyers for AstraZeneca are set to engage in oral arguments against the U.S. Department of Justice in a federal court, according to a September court order and a new report from Bloomberg Law. The British drugmaker aims to challenge the legality of the drug pricing provisions put in place under the IRA, which will allow Medicare to haggle over the prices of some of the costliest drugs it covers starting in 2026. AstraZeneca’s diabetes blockbuster Farxiga ranks among the 10 drugs that were selected ...
Recently, CanSinoBio’s 13-valent Pneumococcal Polysaccharide Conjugate Vaccine (CRM197, TT vector) (hereinafter referred to as “PCV13i”) has obtained the summary report of the Phase III clinical trial. The report shows that the vaccine has good safety and immunogenicity, and the clinical study has reached the predefined clinical endpoints in the target population. CanSinoBio’s PCV13i adopts the covalent combination of polysaccharide antigen and protein carrier. After the polysaccharide antigen connects to the carrier protein, the polysaccharide can be transformed into T-cell-dependent antigen, which not only induces high specific antibody levels in infants and young children under the age of 2 years, but also generates memory B-cells and produces immune memory. At the same time, the company adopts dual-carrier technology, which can reduce the immunosuppression on immunogenicity caused by co-injection with other vaccines. In terms of production process, CanSinoBio adopts a safer production process, and the fermentation medium adopts medium of no animal ...
Recently, BIOKANGTAI’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Beijing Minhai Biotechnology, has signed a sales contract with its Indonesian partner, in which a detailed agreement was made on the quantity, unit price, total amount of the order, and shipment date of the world’s first dual-carrier 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine developed and produced by BIOKANGTAI to be exported to Indonesia. In October 2023, Minhai Biotech obtained the Marketing License for 13-valent Pneumococcal Polysaccharide Conjugate Vaccine issued by the Indonesian Food and Drug Administration, marking that the vaccine has the basic conditions for sale in the local market in Indonesia. The signing of this contract indicates that after years of market expansion, Kangtai’s 13-valent pneumococcal vaccine has formally opened for overseas sales, and as the relevant work continues to progress, this variety will bring new growth points for the company’s 2024 annual results. Dr. Lucia Rizka Andalusia, Acting Head of Indonesia’s Food and Drug Regulatory Agency ...
The start of the new year doesn’t seem to have dulled the zeal of Pfizer’s global cost-cutting campaign, which has already left hundreds of jobs in its wake.Come mid-February, Pfizer will lay off some 52 employees at a facility in South San Francisco, according to a recent Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) alert. That address matches the former headquarters of Global Blood Therapeutics, which Pfizer scooped up for $5.4 billion back in 2022. Along with the deal, Pfizer gained GBT’s marketed sickle cell disease drug Oxbryta. “As previously communicated, Pfizer has launched an enterprise-wide cost realignment program,” a Pfizer spokesperson said via email. The program will “result in some job loss across a number of our locations, including South San Francisco,” the spokesperson said.“Pfizer does not take these changes lightly,” she added. GBT’s Oxbryta won FDA approval in sickle cell disease back in 2019. When Pfizer closed its GBT buyout in October 2022, ...
Diagnosing rare genetic diseases presents a significant challenge due to their complex and often hidden nature. These conditions can arise from a diverse array of genetic variations, many of which are uncommon or specific to each individual, complicating the identification of the exact cause of symptoms. Until recently, unraveling these mysteries involved extensive genetic testing and comparing an individual’s genetic profile against established disease patterns. Complicating matters further, many relevant genes are inactive in commonly tested tissues like blood and skin, which makes it difficult to get a clear picture of the genetic basis of these diseases. This complexity not only prolongs the diagnostic process but also extends patient and family uncertainty and delays the initiation of suitable treatments. Now, a new study could mark a significant step forward in the rapid and efficient diagnosis of these complex diseases, which can affect any part of the body. At Aarhus University ...
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