Author: Peter

Google is betting on the potential of European biotech companies to deliver life-changing drugs by investing alongside Swiss company Novartis in a new $300 million fund run by leading life sciences investment firm Medicxi...The move shows Google casting an increasingly wide net as it pumps cash into global medical research, seeding what it believes will become a core long-term healthcare business...The new fund will back both private and public firms with products that have already reached mid-stage Phase II clinical development, providing them with a new source of growth capital...There is a funding gap because there is a maturing class of biotechnology companies now in Europe...Europe boasts world-class universities and scientists, but its biotechnology sector has long been a poor relation to the bigger U.S. industry, where emerging life sciences firms are able to access a much deeper pool of capital...By providing funds for late-stage drug development, the hope is that more firms will be able to stay independent and continue to build up the value of their experimental medicines, rather than selling out prematurely to larger players...

Centene Corp. says it will begin offering coverage under the Affordable Care Act for insurance exchanges in Missouri, Kansas and Nevada next year at a time other insurers are pulling out of such marketplaces...Centene announced the expansion Tuesday. It didn't specify whether its foray into Missouri and Kansas will fill a 32-county void that will result from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City's decision to leave that individual insurance marketplace next year...That Blue Cross decision affects about 67,000 people, and 25 Missouri counties will be left with no insurance provider under the exchanges unless another company steps in to sell coverage...Centene also plans to expand in Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, Texas and Washington...It says 90% of its exchange customers are eligible for subsidies.

At the American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions in San Diego, drugmakers have been rolling out studies that illustrate how competitive every class in the diabetes field has become. For instance, partners Merck & Co. and Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Boehringer Ingelheim, and solo flyer AstraZeneca all unveiled SGLT2 drug studies, with more to come...we’ve gathered the top stories here…

• Johnson & Johnson's Invokana outcomes study makes it the second heart-helping SGLT2 on the block.
• Novo Nordisk and its long-acting insulin Tresiba have a tough task: going up against Sanofi's blockbuster insulin Lantus.
• Lilly and Boehringer have reason to believe their SGLT2 inhibitor, Jardiance, may improve outcomes for chronic kidney disease patients—so they’re putting the med to the test.
• Sanofi’s Toujeo has plenty of competition in the basal insulin market, but new real-world data shows it may outdo its peers at cutting the risk of hypoglycemia for older patients.
• Sanofi and Regeneron still have months to wait for final data from a key cardiovascular outcomes study of their PCSK9 therapy Praluent, which is in a heated battle with Amgen’s Repatha.
• Novo Nordisk is in a tough market race against Sanofi with combo product Xultophy, which hit the market after the French drugmaker’s similar Soliqua.
• Boehringer and Lilly still don’t know what’s responsible for the dramatic reduction in cardiovascular death risk that Jardiance (empagliflozin) posted in the Empa-Reg outcomes trial.
• Merck and Pfizer last year rolled out positive results from two phase 3 studies they hoped would buoy SGLT2 candidate ertugliflozin once it got to market.

The decision has major implications for the pharmaceutical industry because it will dictate how long brand-name makers of biologic drugs can keep near-copies, called biosimilars, off the market. Even the six months at issue in the case can mean hundreds of millions of dollars in sales...Health insurers expect biosimilars to be cheaper than original brands, like generics, saving consumers billions of dollars each year...Novartis said in a statement that the ruling "will help expedite patient access to life-enhancing treatments."...Amgen spokeswoman Kelley Davenport said the company was disappointed but "will continue to seek to enforce our intellectual property against those parties that infringe upon our rights."...The companies disagreed on how to apply that law's requirement that a biosimilar drug maker give the brand-name manufacturer 180 days notice before launching its copycat version...In July 2015, the appeals court ruled that the 180-day notice must be given after FDA approval, a ruling the Supreme Court reversed...Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas said that the decision was not based on policy arguments, but rather, the "plain language" of the biosimilar law itself...

Nevada is attempting to join 31 other states in expediting health care for immigrant children from low-income families...Implementing speedier coverage will hinge on whether President Donald Trump's administration grants the state permission...If so, an estimated 5,000 minors with green cards, refugee youth and certain other young immigrants will become eligible for Medicaid sooner than previously expected...Gov. Brian Sandoval signed Senate Bill 325...It ends the current five-year wait period for children with residency paperwork to get on government-subsidized health insurance.

Every day, countless people across America order prescription drugs from pharmacies in other countries as they hunt for something increasingly elusive — affordable medications...Under most circumstances, importing medicines is illegal...And it is time to scrap this prohibition, unless Congress finds another way to drive down drug costs...Sixty percent of Americans say lower drug costs should be a top priority, and a whopping 72 percent support the idea of importing medicines from Canada, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll...8 percent of adults surveyed reported that they or someone in their household have already bought prescription drugs from outside the U.S...Meanwhile, the cost of 20 widely used drugs is three times cheaper in Canadian than in New York pharmacies...

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine have demonstrated that a drug originally targeted unsuccessfully to treat cancer may have new life as a potential treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy...The candidate drug, SU9516, represents a different kind of approach for treating DMD, a degenerative muscle disease that usually begins in childhood and has no known cure...NCATS Chemical Genomics Center Acting Branch Chief Juan Marugan, Ph.D., and UNR Med Professor of Pharmacology Dean Burkin, Ph.D., led a team that screened more than 350,000 compounds to find SU9516, which had been previously developed as a treatment for leukemia. The research demonstrated that this compound improved muscle function in both laboratory and animal DMD models. The results, published recently in Molecular Therapy, may provide a promising approach against the disorder and other muscle-wasting conditions...Our findings open the door to develop new drug treatments for DMD...

Lawyers for a Massachusetts pharmacy executive convicted of fraud for his role in a 2012 U.S. meningitis outbreak that killed 64 people asked a judge to order a new trial, charging that prosecutors misbehaved in providing evidence to the jury...Barry Cadden, co-founder of the now-defunct New England Compounding Center, was cleared of second-degree murder charges but was found guilty in March of racketeering and fraud for his role in shipping injectible steroids tainted with fungus linked to the deadly outbreak that also sickened 753 people in 20 states...Cadden's attorneys argued that prosecutors overreached in the number and severity of criminal charges that they filed against him. The attorneys said the prosecutors misled the jury by providing them a binder filled with laboratory tests showing that vials of steroids shipped by NECC were tainted but not providing comparable reports submitted by defense attorneys showing the vials were sterile.

Two of the world’s top drug companies and a local pharma are in the hot seat in South Africa as competition officials launched a probe into "excessive pricing" on lifesaving cancer meds...South Africa’s competition commissioner Tembinkosi Bonakele announced...that his agency would probe pricing on cancer drugs from Roche, Pfizer and Aspen Pharmacare, according to the Competition Commission of South Africa’s official Twitter account...Roche is under investigation for breast cancer drug pricing, according to the commission, while Pfizer’s lung cancer drug pricing is included in the inquiry...Aspen said the probe is for "suspected abuse of dominance" in the cancer drug market...In announcing the probe, the South African commissioner pointed to patents as a driver of high drug prices…Under South African law, the Department of Health "establishes a universal fixed price" for pharma products...Commissioner Bonakele said the probe will "look at patents and how they get abused,"..."A perpetual monopoly aided by patents is unlawful,"…

Most professional consulting groups have all commented about the serious shortfall of working for a biopharma company...the most common complaints about working in marketing for pharma.

• 1ne: Too many damn meetings! By far this is the top complaint we have heard.
• 2wo: Takes too long to implement programs.
• 3hree: Too many “lifers”. A lifer is someone who goes from pharma company to company with outdated ideas.
• 4our: Our CEO is too far removed from our business and is too concerned about Wall Street rather than Main Street.
• 5ive: Good job, but you’re being laid off. Too many pharma companies still lay off the wrong people when one of their products comes off patent or sales decline.
• 6ix: No work/life balance.
• 7even: Benefits have become more expensive.
• 8ight: Open office concepts.
• 9ine: Too heavy a workload.
• 10en: Finally, there is the annual team building events which seem to install a belief that you’re building a cohesive team.