- India’s role in coronavirus vaccine manufacturing grows with new deals (biopharmadive.com)
India's Wockhardt and the Serum Institute of India have lined up new deals to help ramp up the production of two coronavirus vaccines advancing quickly through clinical testing...Wockhardt's 18-month agreement with the U.K. government covers fill/finish work for a vaccine under development by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca. The Serum Institute, meanwhile, entered a wide-ranging pact with Maryland-based Novavax, covering development, production and commercial licensing of its experimental shot...India is already a key supplier to the global drug industry, producing pharmaceutical ingredients, vaccines and other medicines. The two agreements boost the country's role in making the likely billions of needed doses of coronavirus vaccines, a task being shouldered by nations around the world...READ MORE
- AllianceRx Walgreens Prime unveils new patented process for delivering specialty medicine (chaindrugreview.com)
A new patented process for delivering specialty medicine will assure AllianceRx Walgreens Prime patients receive their medicine delivered at the correct temperature...It is the only specialty pharmacy to offer a patented cold-chain shipment packaging process...Maintaining the right temperatures is critical to ensuring the efficacy of specialty medications, including costly biologics and injectables, which have special storage or temperature requirements...The new patented process also reduces waste and eliminates reship needs...AllianceRx Walgreens Prime anticipates a significant annual savings in reship costs...READ MORE
- New Hampshire Passes Bill Allowing Pharmacist-Provided COVID-19 Vaccinations (drugtopics.com)
The state joins New York and Minnesota in providing COVID-19 vaccination access through pharmacy...New Hampshire has passed into law authorization for pharmacists to administer vaccinations for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)...once it becomes available...READ MORE
- Grenada doctors hope to alleviate Las Vegas primary care shortage (reviewjournal.com)
Fourteen recent graduates from St. George’s University arrived in Nevada last month to start their residencies, including 11 in the Las Vegas Valley. And all but two are in family medicine or internal medicine, both areas where Nevada is in short supply of physicians...Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which “really stresses a hospital system, particularly from a manpower standpoint,” having residency training programs is particularly important, said Dr. G. Richard Olds, president of St. George’s University...One big benefit is that graduates of the international medical school...are far more likely to work in low-income, rural and majority-minority geographic areas, Olds said...They’re also more likely than U.S. medical school graduates to go into primary care, an area where there’s a significant shortage of providers nationwide. The situation is particularly bad in Nevada, which ranks 48th nationwide for the number of primary care doctors per 100,000 residents, according to a January UNR report...READ MORE
- US to pay $1B to stock up on J&J’s coronavirus vaccine (biopharmadive.com)
Johnson & Johnson has agreed to supply the U.S. government with 100 million doses of its experimental coronavirus vaccine, a stockpile that could be used either in clinical trials or, if cleared by the Food and Drug Administration, a widespread inoculation campaign...If necessary, the U.S. government can negotiate to buy up to 200 million additional doses of the shot, which would be available at no cost in any U.S. vaccination program, excepting charges from doctors for administration...READ MORE
- Following court ruling, NIH warns drug and device companies to post missing trial data (statnews.com)
Hundreds of drug companies, medical device manufacturers, and universities owe the public a decade’s worth of missing data from clinical trials, federal officials warned last week...New rules issued last week in the wake of a federal court ruling in February instructed clinical trial sponsors to submit missing data for trials conducted between 2007 and 2017 “as soon as possible.” For years, many trials conducted during that span have largely been exempted from reporting their data to ClinicalTrials.gov, a public database, meaning a decade of data about approved drugs and medical devices has never been made public...The court’s ruling, and the federal government’s decision not to appeal it and instead to urge trial sponsors to submit the missing information, represent a major win for transparency advocates, who for years have fought to recover the decadelong gap in publicly available clinical trial data...READ MORE
- Next big COVID-19 treatment may be manufactured antibodies (reuters.com)
As the world awaits a COVID-19 vaccine, the next big advance in battling the pandemic could come from a class of biotech therapies widely used against cancer and other disorders - antibodies designed specifically to attack this new virus...Scientists are still working out the exact role of neutralizing antibodies in recovery from COVID-19, but drugmakers are confident that the right antibodies or a combination can alter the course of the disease...READ MORE
- Rules on prescription drug prices in Georgia tightened in Kemp-signed bill (gwinnettdailypost.com)
Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation...tightening rules on third-party companies that play a role in negotiating pharmaceutical drug prices between insurers and local pharmacies in Georgia...The bill...requires...pharmacy benefits managers to set drug prices within a national average, a move aimed at reining in excessively high prescription prices...Senate Bill 313...also forces PBMs to offer up full rebates to health plans that are typically given by drugmakers, rather than pocketing a portion...And PBMs will need to submit to new audits by the state Department of Community Health as well as requirements for publishing data on prescription prices online...READ MORE
- Trump signs executive order to boost U.S. drug manufacturing (reuters.com)
President Donald Trump...signed an executive order aimed at boosting U.S. production of medicines and medical equipment, lowering drug prices and protecting the United States against shortfalls in a future pandemic...Trump said the order would also support advanced manufacturing processes that would benefit U.S. pharmaceutical companies...The long-awaited measure includes a “Buy America” provision mandating federal purchases of certain medical supplies and equipment deemed essential and moves to remove regulatory hurdles to approval of new U.S. drugs...READ MORE
- Special Report: COVID opens new doors for China’s gene giant (reuters.com)
As countries scramble to test for the novel coronavirus, a Chinese company has become a go-to name around the world...BGI Group, described in one 2015 study as “Goliath” in the fast-growing field of genomics research, is using an opening created by the pandemic to expand its footprint globally. In the past six months, it says it has sold 35 million rapid COVID-19 testing kits to 180 countries and built 58 labs in 18 countries. Some of the equipment has been donated by BGI’s philanthropic arm, promoted by China’s embassies in an extension of China’s virus diplomacy...But as well as test kits, the company is distributing gene-sequencing technology that U.S. security officials say could threaten national security. This is a sensitive area globally. Sequencers are used to analyse genetic material, and can unlock powerful personal information...READ MORE