Top Ten most popular articles on Pharmafile.com this week
pharmafile | July 31, 2020 | News story | Business Services, Manufacturing and Production, Medical Communications, Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | COVID-19, Roche, UK government, Vaccine, lilly, pharma, top 10
Another week dominated by COVID-19. Among our most popular stories this week, Celltrion’s infliximab biosimilar Remsima has scored approval for five different indications in Europe, while the UK Government continues to sign deals to secure doses of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, with the latest being for 60 million doses of GSK and Sanofi’s potential therapy. But the most read story this week was the positive footprint Glenmark’s favipravir made in the treatment of COVID-19, accelerating clincal recovery.
10. Roche’s Actemra fails to improve clinical status in COVID-19-associated pneumonia
Roche has announced the disappointing news that its therapy Actemra/RoActemra (tocilizumab) failed to improve clinical status to a statistically significant degree in adult patients hospitalised with severe COVID-19-associated pneumonia in the Phase 3 COVACTA study, missing its primary endpoint.
Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly have announced strong Phase 3 news on their sodium-glucose co-transporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitor Jardiance (empagliflozin) in the treatment of adults with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, with and without diabetes.
The European Commission (EC) has awarded its approval for Novartis’ Piqray (alpelisib) to be made available in combination with fulvestrant in the treatment of hormone receptor positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 negative (HR+/HER2-) locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer, it has emerged.
7. Takeda poised to cut sales jobs in Japan as restructuring continues
Japan’s biggest drug firm Takeda is said to be mulling plans to cut back its sales operations with a new restructuring programme as part of its ongoing plan to jettison around $10 billion in non-core assets in the wake of its titanic $59 billion acquisition of rare disease firm Shire that completed last year.
6. AstraZeneca partners with Daichii Sankyo in potential $6bn cancer drug deal
AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo have joined forces to drive the development and commercialisation of the latter’s DS-1062, a trophoblast cell-surface antigen (TROP) 2-directed DXd antibody drug conjugate (ADC) in the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), it has emerged, in a deal worth a potential $6 billion in total.
AstraZeneca has secured two new recommendations for approval of its products from the European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP): Imfinzi (durvalumab) and Calquence (acalabrutinib).
4. UCB’s investigational IL-17A and IL-17F inhibitor outclasses Novartis’ Cosentyx in plaque psoriasis
UCB has revealed promising new data from a head-to-head trial pitting the company’s IL-17A and IL-17F inhibitor bimekizumab against Novartis’ IL-17A inhibitor Cosentyx (secukinumab) in the treatment of moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis.
3. Celltrion’s infliximab biosimilar Remsima secures European approval in five indications
The subcutaneous (SC) formulation of Remsima, Celltrion’s biosimilar version of infliximab, has secured approval from the European Commission covering five indications, according to the company, including ankylosing spondylitis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, psoriatic arthritis and psoriasis.
2. UK Government secures 60 million doses of Sanofi and GSK’s COVID-19 vaccine
The UK Government has sealed another deal to procure an effective COVID-19 vaccine for its citizens, partnering up with Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline to reserve 60 million doses of their potential prophylactic candidate currently in development.
1. Glenmark’s favipiravir accelerates viral clearance and clinical recovery in COVID-19 patients
The study evaluated the use of the drug, in combination with standard of care, in 150 participants with mild to moderate forms of COVID-19, and it was found to generate 28.6% faster viral clearance of the virus compared to placebo with supportive care alone.
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