News

There’s nothing like getting a new CAR, in fact, it just might save your life.

The National Institute for Health Research has started the UK’s first commercial trial, funded by Novartis, of a new treatment for Sjogren’s syndrome.

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry has announced the third-quarter payment from the sector of £79 million paid to the Department of Health to underwrite the higher-than-forecast growth of the medicines bill under the 2014 Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme.

Novartis chief executive Joe Jimenez has been officially unveiled as president of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, taking over from ousted Sanofi head Chris Viehbacher.

Novel emerging treatments are set to reinvigorate the market for dyslipidemia therapies, which is currently constrained by patent expirations on leading products, according to new research.

Haematologists are now deploying an attack strategy that has already stormed the beaches of solid tumour treatment paradigms by unleashing the patient’s own immune system with so-called “checkpoint inhibitors.”

 As reported in two studies at the American Society of Hematology meeting in San Francisco, the anti-PD-1 checkpoint inhibitors from Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck & Co – Opdivo (nivolumab) and Keytruda (pembrolizumab) respectively – have shown remarkable efficacy in classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) patients who relapsed after failing all prior treatments.

Shire, fresh from the collapse of its $55 billion takeover by AbbVie, has been touting its pipeline to investors in the USA, highlighting treatments which could contribute $3 billion in sales by 2020.

The first biosimilar of AbbVie’s Humira (adalimumab) – the world’s top-selling medicine – has been launched in India by Zydus Cadila, according to media reports.

Labour has unveiled plans to create a new cancer fund that will pay for surgery and radiotherapy as well as innovative cancer medicines from April 2016, when the existing Cancer Drugs Fund is set to expire.

Eli Lilly and Incyte say their investigational JAK inhibitor baricitinib has hit primary goals in a late-stage trial in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

Cost regulators for National Health Service drugs in England are now endorsing the use of Janssen’s Stelara as a cost-effective option for treating psoriatic arthritis in specific circumstances.

Payments to doctors by pharma are like an abscess that has been festering for a long time and that now needs to be lanced.

AstraZeneca’s Moventig (naloxegol) has been approved in the European Union for the treatment of opioid-induced constipation.

Acceleron Pharma and Celgene Corp have unveiled positive mid-stage data at the American Society of Hematology meeting in San Francisco on two compounds – luspatercept and sotatercept – which are being developed to target rare blood disorders.

Pfizer is establishing “a gene therapy platform” by signing a haemophilia B pact with Spark Therapeutics and recruiting a leading UK scientist to head up rare disease genetic research.