News

US regulators have turned down Pfizer’s request to sell its rheumatoid arthritis drug Xeljanz as a treatment for chronic plaque psoriasis.

Kenya has become the first country to take up the Novartis Access programme, under which the Swiss drug giant is providing a batch of essential medicines at a cost of $1 per treatment per month. 

NHS 111 and GP out-of-hours services are to be brought much closer together under a fundamental redesign of urgent care delivery throughout the National Health Service. 

Cancer deaths in England could be reduced if GPs used the two-week urgent referral route for suspected cases more frequently, new research suggests.

Eli Lilly and Incyte’s experimental rheumatoid arthritis drug baricitinib has beaten the world’s biggest selling drug Humira in improving disease activity after 12 weeks’ treatment, according to data from a late-stage clinical trial.

Merck & Co is expanding its clinical trials agreement with Incyte so that an experimental immunotherapy combination being assessed by the firms in skin cancer can taken into Phase III development.

Merck KGaA has announced a new global rebrand, with subsidiaries Merck Serono and Merck Millipore being eliminated and absorbed into the main brand.

University College London is linking with Japanese pharma giant Takeda in a research deal that strives to identify and validate new target genes for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

Scottish prostate cancer patients will now be able to get treatment with Janssen’s Zytiga much earlier in the treatment pathway, after the Scottish Medicines Consortium had a change of heart and endorsed the drug’s use before chemotherapy.

US biotech Asterias Biotherapeutics is bringing onboard the UK’s Cell Therapy Catapult to advance development of a large scale manufacturing processes for its cancer vaccine AST-VAC2.

Insufficient efficacy and a recommendation from an independent data monitoring committee has prompted Eli Lilly to pull the plug on its late-stage heart disease candidate evacetrapib.

NHS England has named three new appointments to strengthen its work on primary care, drive improved cancer services, and lead the commissioning of specialised hospital services, in a move that chief executive Simon Steven says will help “turbo-charge” implementation of the Five Year Forward View.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has unveiled a new service that seeks to accelerate the adoption and spread of innovative health technologies through the National Health Service.

Otsuka subsidiary Astex Pharmaceuticals is the latest pharma company to join the UK’s Dementia Consortium.

Bowel cancer can categorised into four distinct diseases, each with its own set of biological characteristics, a major international study, funded by the UK’s The Institute of Cancer Research in London and the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, has found.