News

Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly are celebrating after getting the green light in the USA for their diabetes combination Glyxambi.

Ardelyx shares were down near 30% in late-afternoon trading Monday after it emerged that its investigational kidney disease drug tenapanor was linked with high rates of diarrhoea in mid-stage trials.

By 2025 scientists will have developed a cure for dementia or at least a drug that significantly slows its progression, Alistair Burns, NHS England’s national clinical director for dementia, said this week.

Novartis unit Alcon says the US Food and Drug Administration has approved Pazeo for the treatment of ocular itching associated with allergic conjunctivitis.

Industry groups have welcomed the government’s decision not to introduce further price cuts for branded medicines not covered by the UK’s voluntary Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme, but concerns remain.

Ireland-based Icon is to acquire MediMedia Pharma Solutions for $120 million, creating “the industry’s leading integrated scientific communications and market access solution”.

Pfizer has pulled the plug on its $70-million deal with Repligen to develop the latter’s spinal muscular atrophy programme.

Yet more good news for Shire has come with the US Food and Drug Administration approving its attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder blockbuster Vyvanse for binge-eating disorder, the first medicine approved by the agency to treat this condition.

AbbVie has posted a net loss for the fourth quarter, hit by charges connected to the termination of its proposed $55 billion acquisition of Shire, but sales of its anti-inflammatory blockbuster Humira continued to rise.

Biogen Idec has posted fourth-quarter results which show that sales of its oral multiple sclerosis pill Tecfidera have comfortably passed analyst forecasts, pushing net profits up 46%.

Mundipharma has scooped 10 awards – three of them gold – at the 29th annual PM Society Awards – marking it out as the most successful pharma company for 2014. 

AstraZeneca has caused a stir by signing four collaborations to use CRISPR, a closely-watched genome-editing technique, across its entire discovery platform.

The US Food and Drug Administration has expanded approval of Johnson & Johnson/Pharmacyclic’s Imbruvica for patients with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, a rare indolent type of B-cell lymphoma.

The government is sinking a further £13.7 million into four new stratified medicine collaborations funded by the Medical Research Council, which aim to develop more targeted treatments for a wide range of diseases.

Celgene Corp has posted another impressive set of financials for the fourth quarter, driven by strong performances of its multiple myeloma drugs Revlimid and Pomalyst.