President-elect Joe Biden has announced a proposal for a $1.9 trillion economic rescue package that includes $415 billion to fight the pandemic, including boosting COVID-19 vaccine deployment. Of that latter total, some $20 billion would be invested in a national vaccination program to establish community vaccination centers across the country, including mobile vaccination units in…
Amylyx hires new CFO
Amylyx Pharmaceuticals, a company dedicated to developing new treatments for neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), will install James Frates as chief financial officer (CFO) on Jan. 25, 2021. Frates has currently worked as the CFO of the global biopharma company Alkermes (NSDQ: ALKS) since 1998. “We are so excited for Jim to join…
Unclear path for drug-pricing reform after Dem sweep
With Democrats having gained control of the Senate and the presidency, some form of drug-pricing reform is likely. But with the raging COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing threats to the Affordable Care Act, Democrats are more likely to focus on those issues in the near term, according to Barrett Thornhill, a partner at the public affairs…
Catalent to acquire Acorda’s manufacturing and packaging operations
Catalent (NYSE:CTLT) has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase a dry-powder inhaler (DPI) capsule manufacturing and packaging facility from Acorda Therapeutics (NSDQ:ACOR). The acquisition will enable Catalent to establish a center of excellence for spray-dried dispersion for DPI capsule manufacturing. The transaction will also expand Catalent’s existing U.S.-based commercial-scale capabilities in metered-dose inhalers and nasal…
COVID-19 forces healthcare industry to get creative when battling opioid crisis
The pandemic has worsened the opioid crisis. In the 12-month period ending in May 2020, the U.S. had 81,000 drug overdoses, with synthetic opioids being the main driver of overdose deaths. That’s the highest number on record, according to provisional data from the CDC. And the volume of overdoses in May was 42% higher than…
Moderna and NIH assessing whether COVID-19 vaccine doses can be halved
AstraZeneca (LON:AZN) inadvertently discovered halving the first dose of its COVID-19 vaccine could boost its efficacy. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Moderna (NSDQ:MRNA) are examining vaccine data to determine whether they can halve the 100-microgram dose to vaccinate twice as many people. Some data from Moderna’s clinical trial support that possibility,…
Pharma industry and Biden administration could be on a drug-pricing collision course
Prominent pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer (NYSE:PFE), Sanofi (NYSE:SNY), GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK) and Teva (NYSE: TEVA) intend to raise U.S. prices of more than 300 drugs starting Jan. 1, according to Reuters. But President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to slash drug prices. “Too many Americans cannot afford their prescription drugs, and prescription drug corporations are profiteering off of the pocketbooks of sick individuals,” he wrote in a healthcare…
Cyberattacks against pharma rose in 2020 — but gauging their impact could take time
The number of attempted cyberattacks on the pharma sector has surged in 2020, but it may be too soon to assess their damage. Evidence of the uptick can be found in attempts by cybercriminals with ties to Iran, China and Russia to break into networks from top pharma companies and the World Health Organisation. Earlier…
Trump’s ‘most-favored nation’ drug-pricing plan hits a snag
A federal judge in Maryland has temporarily blocked a Trump executive order that tied Medicare reimbursement for several drugs to lower rates in other countries. The executive order was facing a flurry of lawsuits. U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake sided with the plaintiffs’ argument that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did not…
Biden to bolster COVID-19 vaccine production with Defense Production Act
Joe Biden is reportedly planning on invoking the Defense Production Act to shore up the production of COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S. While FDA has authorized the distribution of vaccines from Moderna Moderna (NSDQ:MRNA) and Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and its partner BioNTech (NSDQ:BNTX), distribution has been patchy thus far. The news came from Dr. Celine Gounder, a Biden…