AstraZeneca Puts $2 Billion Into Summit, Whose Drug Beat AstraZeneca’s Own Imfinzi in Biliary Cancer
AstraZeneca bought access to ivonescimab, not rights, and paid a premium to sit next to the drug that beat Imfinzi.
Athithi Verma
China Cleared Jaypirca in Frontline CLL on a Win Over Chemotherapy and Non-Inferiority to Ibrutinib
The label reaches frontline CLL, but against a modern BTK inhibitor the evidence so far is a response rate.
AbbVie’s Juvmo Won FDA Approval Three Days Before ICER Holds a Public Meeting on Its Value
AbbVie now has to name a price for Juvmo into a benchmark that ICER set before the drug was even approved.
Merck’s $4 Billion Daiichi ADC Pact Takes Its Third FDA Setback in Three Years
The $4bn deal’s first return keeps slipping toward 2028, the year Keytruda begins to lose protection.
Kodiak’s Zenkuda Put 54% of Wet AMD Patients on Six-Month Dosing, Four Years After an Extended-Dosing Miss
The molecule that failed on long intervals in 2022 now holds vision with most patients on six-month dosing.
Sleeve Gastrectomy Beat GLP-1s on Two-Year Cost by $12,794 in a Study Intuitive Surgical Funded
The cost gap rests on drug prices that have already moved, in a study whose funder sells surgical systems.
Tuznue Won Brazil Approval a Month After Its Plant Passed Anvisa Inspection, Nearly 20 Months After Filing
In Brazil the constraint on Prestige’s Herceptin biosimilar was not the dossier. It was the factory inspection.
Merck Is Taking a $400 Million Charge for a Preclinical KRAS G12D Drug After Backing Off Revolution
Merck is buying into KRAS G12D at the start line, well behind the company it reportedly tried to buy in January.
Bahrain Licensed Foundayo Six Months After the FDA as Lilly Takes Its Oral GLP-1 Global
Bahrain is small. The move matters as evidence of the global rollout Lilly argued a small-molecule GLP-1 would allow.
CMS Counted 450 Medicaid Quality Reporting Requirements for 260 Measures, and 37 States Pledged to Streamline Them
The pledge sets a direction without a single measure, target or date. The lever that will matter is managed care procurement.