World News

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Haia) is opposing the feminization of pharmacies, the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) confirmed. Haia has objected even if there are barriers between men and women in the shop, and despite pharmacies in malls employing women, Ibrahim …

Roche announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation for the investigational medicine ocrelizumab (OCREVUSTM) for the treatment of people with primary progressive multiple sclerosis (PPMS). There are currently no approved treatments for PPMS, a debilitating form of MS characterised by steadily worsening …

(Rajon Pandit): Australian police discovered millions of dollars worth of drugs hidden inside a shipment of bras, part of what they said Monday was the country’s biggest ever liquid methamphetamine bust. Officers found more than Aus$1 billion (US$712 million) of the lethally-addictive drug — also known as ice — in …

(Russell Lynch): The drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline was accused on Friday of cheating the NHS and the taxpayer after it was hit with a £37.6m fine for keeping the cost of anti-depressants artificially high. GSK bore the brunt of a total of £45m fines handed out by the Competition and Markets …

Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech has filed for global patent of two vaccine candidates – a recombinant vaccine and an inactivated vaccine – for Zika virus. The company announced that it could make available the inactivated vaccine in two years if the Indian Government fast-tracked the regulatory approvals once the pre-clinical trials proved to be successful. Addressing a press conference here on …

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Halaven (eribulin mesylate), a type of chemotherapy, for the treatment of liposarcoma (a specific type of soft tissue sarcoma) that cannot be removed by surgery (unresectable) or is advanced (metastatic). This treatment is approved for patients who received prior chemotherapy that contained …

Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk has been ranked first among the pharmaceutical industries in the 2016 global list of 100 most sustainable corporations, released by the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. The world’s biggest insulin maker, in a statement on Tuesday, said the company ranked 19 in the overall list. The …

Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of Sanofi, has signed an agreement with the Human Vaccines Project Inc. to partially fund the non-profit, public-private partnership convening leading academic researchers and industrial partners to solve the primary problems impeding vaccine/immunotherapy development by “decoding” the human immune system. The Project is a global …

Novartis has announced that it is adding to its diverse and deep immuno-oncology pipeline through a strategic alliance and licensing agreement with Surface Oncology. The agreement gives Novartis access to four pre-clinical programs that target regulatory T cell populations, inhibitory cytokines, and immunosuppressive metabolites in the tumor microenvironment. These programs …

Pfizer Inc. has announced an expansion of its Research & Development (R&D) investment strategy to include early-stage companies on the leading edge of scientific innovation, providing them with both equity and access to resources for research in promising areas aligned with Pfizer’s core interests. The first four investments of the …

Merck, known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, announced today that it has acquired IOmet, a privately-held UK-based drug discovery company focused on the development of innovative medicines for the treatment of cancer, with a particular emphasis on the fields of cancer immunotherapy and cancer metabolism. Under terms …

Not every drug saw a price increase in 2015, despite widespread media coverage suggesting otherwise. Much of the national drug pricing debate last year centered on steep cost increases, including Daraprim’s infamous 5000% overnight price hike under former Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli. Adding to this fervor was an announcement …

Expanding interest in traditional Chinese medicine in the United States is fostering a potentially lucrative new niche market for farmers who plant the varieties of herbs, flowers and trees sought by practitioners. While almost all practitioners still rely on imports from China, dwindling wild stands there, as well as quality …

India has revised its list of essential medicines to add drugs for diseases ranging from cancer and HIV/AIDS to hepatitis C, in a move aimed at making them more affordable. The update to the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) is just the third since it was compiled in 1996. …

Investors in India’s $15 billion pharmaceutical industry are favouring smaller firms with little or no exposure to the United States, where increasingly tight regulatory controls have burnt two of the country’s biggest drugmakers over the past month. Heavyweight generics makers, led by Sun Pharma and Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, have long …

India’s largest drugmaker Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd said it had received a warning letter from the US Food and Drug Administration for violating manufacturing standards at its Halol plant in western India. The warning indicates the agency is not satisfied with the remedial measures Sun Pharma has been taking at …

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Kanuma (sebelipase alfa) as the first treatment for patients with a rare disease known as lysosomal acid lipase (LAL) deficiency. Patients with LAL deficiency (also known as Wolman disease and cholesteryl ester storage disease [CESD]) have no or little LAL enzyme activity. …

The company that sparked an outcry by raising the price of its HIV drug in the US by 5,000% says it will cut its price for some users. Martin Shkreli’s drug company Turing Pharmaceuticals bought the rights to 62-year old drug Daraprim and increased the price per pill from $13.50 …

Scientists aiming to take the bite out of malaria have produced a strain of mosquitoes carrying genes that block its transmission, with the idea that they could breed with other members of their species in the wild and produce offspring that cannot spread the disease. The researchers said on Monday they used …

Pfizer Inc, the maker of Viagra and Lipitor, has struck a deal to buy Botox-maker Allergan Plc in a transaction valued at about $160 billion. The complex deal – the biggest ever in the healthcare sector – will allow Pfizer to shift its legal base to Ireland in a so-called …