News

The US Food and Drug Administration has rejected Pharmaxis’ cystic fibrosis drug Bronchitol because of inadequate trial data.

Merck KGaA has been busy this week, signing a pact with Bristol-Myers Squibb for the promotion of Glucophage in China, and entering a strategic alliance with Nordic Bioscience for the development of sprifermin for osteoarthritis of the knee.

The Health Select Committee has heard about the bullying culture by a former NHS manager who was gagged by his former Strategic Health Authority. 

Firms reliant on the life science sectors have established a new ‘Science Industry Partnership’ to help develop new skills in the UK.

Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly have started a Phase III trial designed to show their diabetes drug Trajenta is safe and effective in patients with signs of kidney damage.

As Pfizer’s potential blockbuster arthritis drug Xeljanz (tofacitinib) prepares to come to market, a US Senator is demanding to know what US taxpayers can expect in terms of its affordability and protection of their interests, given that “taxpayer-funded research was fundamental” to the drug’s development.

Care provided by the NHS health and social care system will break down if quicker progress is not made to develop more integrated services which focus on meeting the needs of individual patients, MPs have warned.

New research has found that 44% of US parents will not allow their children to be vaccinated with GlaxoSmithKline’s Cervarix or Sanofi Pasteur/Merck & Co’s Gardasil.

The National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment programme in the UK has awarded £2.6 million to a research team at the University of Nottingham to lead an international study of tranexamic acid as a potential treatment for intracerebral haemorrhage, a form of stroke caused by bleeding in the brain.

Novo Nordisk saw its shares slip 4% after its stock was downgraded and a higher dose of its insulin drug liraglutide failed to greatly impress on weight loss scores in a late-stage clinical trial.

The Canadian province of Quebec’s decision to set a maximum price for an entire class of medicines has been attacked as “dangerous.”

Investigators working on clinical trials should be rewarded for sharing the data generated by those trials through protocols and methods that ensure “the more data are used, the more credit trialists receive”, two researchers from Yale University School of Medicine in the US have urged.

The ability of clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to make truly independent decisions has been called into question after an analysis found a significant portion of members had conflicts of interest, raising fears again of a potentially significant weak spot in the new incoming system.

AstraZeneca has taken the axe to its R&D operations, saying it intends to cut around 1,600 jobs around the world by 2016 to reduce costs by some $190 million a year over the same period.

Figures from the Grattan Institute Health think-tank has found Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme pays at least $1.3 billion a year too much for prescription drugs.