Government
Drugmakers will have until the end of February to decide whether they want to participate in the second round of Medicare negotiations or not. CMS has until June 1 to send an initial offer for the adjusted prices.
Along with its gene editing therapy Casgevy, Vertex is offering fertility preservation support for its patients—a program that the HHS claims violates anti-kickback statutes.
An OIG report zeroed in on what it said were three particularly problematic accelerated approvals: Biogen’s Aduhelm, Sarepta’s Exondys and Covis’ Makena.
Concurrently, a preprint from the industry-backed Vital Transformation found a 50% drop in company investments into small-molecule drug development.
Vanda called the attention of FDA Commissioner Robert Califf to what it termed the “sentiment that the agency avoids public scrutiny of its decisions.”
According to BMO Capital Markets, Medicare coverage of Lilly’s Zepbound opens the door to using secondary indications to secure CMS coverage for obesity drugs.
While layoffs have slowed in the second half of the year, according to BioSpace data, companies including Bayer, Bristol Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson are cutting hundreds or even thousands of employees in 2024.
AbbVie’s blockbuster Humira held 105 patents, shielding the anti-inflammatory drug from biosimilar competition for more than 20 years. Proposed reforms could help prevent companies from extending exclusivity with such patent thickets.
A week after dining with Trump and his team at Mar-a-Lago, leaders at Pfizer and Eli Lilly have publicly stated that they intend to collaborate with the incoming administration on key issues affecting the pharma industry.
The EPIC Act has been proposed with bipartisan and industry support to give small molecule drugs the same protection against price negotiation as biologics, but concerns over how to balance the federal budget could prevent a short-term fix to the IRA.
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