News

The Department of Health is setting aside a cash pot of £15 million for GPs so that practices won’t feel any pinch from a sharp rise in Care Quality Commission fees planned within the next two years.

GPs fear that more than half of patients aged over 75 years are taking too many medicines and that many are not taking them as prescribed, new research has found, highlighting the urgent need for new procedures to improve treatment and compliance and thus boost care and save money.

GlaxoSmithKline is hoping to file 20 new medicines by 2020, followed by a further 20 in the subsequent five-year period.

European regulators have expanded the reach of Celgene’s acute myeloid leukaemia treatment Vidaza so that elderly patients unable to undergo intensive therapies such as stem cell transplantation can now access the drug.

European regulators have again expanded the use of Bayer and Regeneron’s Eylea with an approval to treat visual impairment due to myopic choroidal neovascularisation, an eye disease associated with high degrees of myopia (near-sightedness).

A new initiative aiming to boost UK pathology research is to be launched next year with a cash injection of £635,000.

As pharma’s taste for deal-making shows no signs of abating, Shire is snapping up US rare disease group Dyax in a transaction worth around $5.9 billion, and potentially $646 million more.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has confirmed that Celgene’s Abraxane will not be routinely funded for treating pancreatic cancer on the National Health Service in England, claiming that the drug’s cost does not justify its benefit to patients.

Researchers at Manchester University are advancing a new targeted approach to treating cancer that involves ‘throwing’ drug-packed grenades with heat-sensitive triggers at tumour cells.

Inflated descriptions of new cancer drugs, as well as an absence of medical context, may lead to misunderstanding among readers, according to a research letter published in JAMA Oncology.

The first review of the Prime Minister’s Challenge Fund has said that plans to extend GP services to Sundays should be scrapped due to low demand.

Pfizer has confirmed that it is in “preliminary friendly discussions with Allergan in relation to a potential transaction”, following intensive media coverage.

Pfizer is in preliminary talks to take over Allergan, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times. The unconfirmed reports follow contact between Pfizer head Ian Read and his counterpart at Allergan, Brent Saunders.

In the wake of a sharp decline in sales of its blockbuster arthritis drug, Remicade, MSD is to offer the NHS discounts and rebates amounting to £48 million on £191 million sales, announced medical affairs director Colin Wheeler last week.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has outlined plans for what he believes is a more “patient-focused” NHS culture.