MUMBAI India’s largest drugmaker Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd has been warned by U.S. health regulators for violating manufacturing standards at its Halol plant in India, even as it has been working on fixing issues at the plant for over a year. The U.S. ... More »
LONDON AstraZeneca (AZN.L) said on Thursday it had agreed to buy 55 percent stake of privately held biotech firm Acerta Pharma for $4 billion to give it access to a new kind of drug for fighting blood cancers. AstraZeneca will pay $2.5 billion upfront, with a ... More »
ZURICH Novartis’ phase III study for its acute myeloid leukemia (AML) drug showed it improved overall survival by 23 percent for patients with FLT3 mutations, the Swiss drugmaker said on Sunday. Basel-based Novartis said the study was the first large controlle... More »
ZURICH Swiss drugmaker Novartis said the latest findings from a study on its newest therapy for two kinds of blood cancer track earlier results, bolstering its confidence in a 2017 U.S. regulatory submission. Novartis is testing CTL019, its investigational chi... More »
VIENNA Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding has dropped out of a high-profile project to develop an antibiotic for treating “superbug” infections, the company said on Sunday. Roche had agreed in 2013 to pay privately held partner Polyphor up to 500 million Swiss fran... More »
SHANGHAI China, already a global powerhouse in high-tech areas from solar panels to bullet trains, is turning its industrial might to the challenge of making more of its own drugs for a vast and aging population. Given the 10 years or more it typically takes t... More »
DAKAR A one-month-old baby girl who was Guinea’s last reported Ebola case left hospital on Saturday, delighting medical staff and putting the country on course to be declared free of the deadly virus. Guinea will become officially Ebola-free after 42 days if n... More »
Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) secured formal board approval on Sunday for its acquisition of Botox maker Allergan Plc (AGN.N) for more than $150 billion, a deal that will create the world’s biggest drug maker, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal, the l... More »
Pfizer Inc’s (PFE.N) looming deal to buy Botox maker Allergan Plc (AGN.N) for more than $150 billion will cap a record-breaking run for mergers and acquisitions in the healthcare sector, taking the cumulative value of deals in 2015 to more than $600 billion. H... More »
Novartis AG said on Friday it received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s regular approval for a drug combination to treat an aggressive form of skin cancer. The FDA approved Tafinlar and Mekinist for treatment of metastatic melanoma based on two years ov... More »
NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES In recent days, the largest U.S. managers of private prescription drug benefits have cut off at least eight pharmacies that work closely with drugmakers, intensifying scrutiny of a system that helps inflate drug prices, officials at the be... More »
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Friday it approved Baxalta Inc’s drug for use in patients with a type of rare bleeding disorder. The drug, Adynovate, was approved to control and reduce the frequency of bleeding episodes in patients with Hemophili... More »
LONDON British pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies face a major skills shortage which threatens future investment and the long-term success of the life sciences sector, according to a new industry report. The Association of the British Pharmaceutical In... More »
WASHINGTONHillary Clinton on Saturday called for looser federal regulations governing marijuana, to boost scientific research on a drug that many tout for relieving pain, among other medical benefits, according to media reports. Speaking at a campaign event in... More »
Merck & Co’s drug to reverse the effects of muscle relaxants used in surgery is safe and effective enough to warrant approval, an independent panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said. The drug, which goes by the chemical name of sugammadex, has repe... More »
LONDON Three of Europe’s top drugmakers – GlaxoSmithKline, Roche and Sanofi – face health checks this week at high-profile presentations designed to show they can overcome looming market threats. The unusual confluence of investor days comes at a testing time ... More »
LONDON, Anyone who goes down with flu in Europe this winter could be asked to enroll in a randomized clinical trial in which they will either be given a drug, which may or may not work, or standard advice to take bed rest and paracetamol. Those who agree could... More »
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it approved Johnson & Johnson’s chemotherapy to treat specific soft-tissue sarcomas (STS) that have spread to other parts of the body or cannot be removed by surgery. The drug, Yondelis, is designed to delay the progr... More »
BOSTON/NEW YORK A panel of medical experts said on Friday the prices of prescription medicines in the United States need to be brought in line with the value they bring to patients instead of continuing to let drugmakers set any price they choose. “Americans a... More »
An independent panel of advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday voted 10-4 in favor of approving AstraZeneca Plc’s gout drug. All 10 who backed the drug, lesinurad, qualified their vote by urging the FDA to ask AstraZeneca for studies after... More »
GENEVA The world should stop vaccinating children against one of the three strains of the crippling polio virus as part of a drive to eradicate the disease once and for all, a group of health experts has advised the World Health Organization. There is no cure ... More »
LONDON Alzheimer’s disease is moving out of the shadows as new plays tackle head-on the emotional pain of a condition that robs its victims of words, memories and coherent thought. For a generation of young playwrights, dementia is proving to be a touchstone i... More »
ZURICH Nestle’s health science division is investing $70 million in a product technology center that will become the unit’s new U.S. headquarters and research hub, the division said on Friday. The Bridgewater, New Jersey center will further Nestle’s healthcare... More »
CHICAGO Cancer researchers are just beginning to understand the ramifications of the fundamental discoveries behind the 2015 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, which were awarded on Wednesday to three scientists for explaining how cells repair mistakes in DNA that occ... More »
(Reuters Health) – Although women make up roughly half of the world’s HIV cases, they remain largely excluded from clinical trials testing drugs, vaccines and potential cures for the virus, a research review confirms. In an analysis spanning several decades th... More »
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved Merck & Co Inc’s immunotherapy, Keytruda, for patients with the most common form of lung cancer whose tumors produce a specific biological marker. The FDA approval for Keytruda in advanced non-small cell... More »
Switzerland’s Roche has a potential new multi-billion-dollar drug to help it diversify beyond cancer treatments following the success of ocrelizumab against a hard-to-treat type of multiple sclerosis. The injectable antibody medicine is the first product to sh... More »
COPENHAGEN Shares in Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO) rose as much as 5 percent on Monday after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the diabetes drug Tresiba, allowing the Danish drugmaker to prepare its largest ever drug launch. The FDA’s decision lat... More »
PARIS French drugmaker Sanofi said the European Commission had cleared its key cholesterol drug Praluent for the treatment of so-called “bad cholesterol,” or low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, in certain adult patients with hypercholesterolemia. The dr... More »
MUMBAI The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has revoked an approval issued in March to India’s Sun Pharma Advanced Research Company Ltd (SPARC) to launch a drug for seizures, citing manufacturing quality problems at its production site. The move comes as a se... More »
The first electronic automatic injector to deliver a drug for the most common form of multiple sclerosis received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday. The injection delivers Betaseron, a disease-modifying drug approved 22 years ago by... More »
An experimental antibody developed by Merck & Co Inc was shown in pivotal studies to reduce by about 10 percentage points the risk that infection with Clostridium difficile bacterium, which can cause a deadly diarrhea, will recur. In the United States, C. diff... More »
PARIS Sanofi said on Monday a second late-stage Phase III study of its LixiLan diabetes drug had met its main target, readying it for regulatory submissions by the fourth quarter in the United States and the first quarter of next year in the European Union. Li... More »
A new Novartis AG drug to treat heart failure should cost 17 percent less than its list price of $4,560 per year to keep health costs in line with growth in the overall U.S. economy, according to the nonprofit ICER. In a draft report released on Friday, the Bo... More »
WASHINGTON A number of important drugs come from plants, but some medicinal plants are endangered or tricky to grow. For some scientists, finding ways to ensure ready access to these drugs has become a priority. Researchers on Thursday said they have identifie... More »
LONDON Pfizer’s stop-smoking drug Chantix does not raise risks of heart attack or depression, contrary to previous reports, and should be recommended to more smokers wanting to quit, scientists said on Monday. In a study tracking 150,000 smokers in England for... More »
ZURICH Novartis plans the first human tests next year of a “smart” contact lens it is developing with Google designed to help restore the eye’s natural autofocus. “This project is progressing well,” Novartis Chief Executive Joe Jimenez told Swiss newspaper Le ... More »
(Reuters Health) – Taking one or two baby aspirins a day for at least five years was tied to a lower risk of colorectal cancer in a study from Denmark. Earlier studies had suggested that aspirin and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibupro... More »
LONDON British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca named Sean Bohen as its chief medical officer, in an appointment that it said could help accelerate the development of new oncology and immunology medicines. AstraZeneca, Britain’s second biggest drugmaker behi... More »
WASHINGTON Scientists have invented a speedy method to make potent painkilling opioids using bioengineered baker’s yeast instead of poppies, but need to fine-tune the process to make it commercially viable, according to a study published on Thursday. The new m... More »
Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline temporarily closed a North Carolina factory on Tuesday after testing at a cooling tower found bacteria that causes deadly Legionnaire’s disease. The Legionella bacteria were discovered during routine inspections at the site in Zebulon... More »
WASHINGTON, August 3 Women’s health group Planned Parenthood, under attack by anti-abortionists posting hidden-camera videos online, will be the focus of a partisan showdown on Monday in the U.S. Senate, with any wider influence on voters from the charge still... More »
LONDON/GENEVA The world is on the verge of being able to protect humans against Ebola, the World Health Organization said on Friday, as a trial in Guinea found a vaccine to have been 100 percent effective. Initial results from the trial, which tested Merck... More »
LONDON Gene therapy for deafness is moving closer to reality, with new research on Wednesday showing the technique for fixing faulty DNA can improve responses in mice with genetic hearing loss. Separately, a clinical trial backed by Novartis is under way to he... More »
LONDON Scientists have identified a key gene used by poppies to make morphine, paving the way for better methods of producing the medically important drug, potentially without the need for cultivating poppy fields. The latest finding follows recent success in ... More »
