Industry news

• What Parents Should Know About Rare But Scary COVID-19-Related Illness

  11 March 2021 Michael Merschel / Drugs.com

  The coronavirus hit the Dye family of Anchorage, Alaska, in mid-November. Parents Heath and Hailey were sick for a week. Cameron, then 6, had a mild fever for a day and a bit of a cough. Two-year-old Lucas never showed symptoms.

• Biotechs to test feasibility of a shelf-stable, powder mRNA COVID-19 vaccine

  11 March 2021 Hannah Balfour / European Pharmaceutical Review

  The collaborators hope to make mRNA COVID-19 vaccines accessible to all by creating a shelf-stable, reconstitutable powder formulation.

• Economic considerations in allocating COVID-19 vaccines in the US

  11 March 2021 Kirsten Axelsen / European Pharmaceutical Review

  With more COVID-19 vaccines coming onto the market, an end to the pandemic is emerging. However, even with efforts to scale up production, the supply of vaccines will limit the speed of immunisation. This will require careful vaccine allocation to maximise social and economic benefits across the US. 

• Diabetes and obesity: treatment and trials update

  10 March 2021 Hannah Balfour / European Pharmaceutical Review

  The double-blind, double-dummy trial assessed the efficacy and safety of the GLP-1 analogue at two different doses, 2.4mg and 1.0mg (the dose approved for diabetes treatment) versus placebo for weight management in adults who were overweight or obese and had type 2 diabetes (T2D). The results were published in The Lancet.

• Cognito's light-and-sound therapy slows Alzheimer's declines in clinical study

  10 March 2021 Conor Hale / FierceBiotech

  Cognito Therapeutics has delivered clinical data from its digital treatment for patients with Alzheimer’s disease—which relies on light and sound to stimulate specific electrical frequencies in the brain’s neurons—showing it helped improve memory and cognition as well as physical symptoms.

• Healing spinal cord injuries by reprogramming scar-forming cells

  09 March 2021 FiercePharma

  Sox2 is a stem cell protein that’s known to proliferate after a spinal cord injury. Now researchers at UT Southwestern and Indiana University are proposing a method for harnessing the protein to promote healing.

• Finding Patients With Rare Diseases: Two Truths and a Lie

  09 March 2021 FiercePharma

  The hope for many companies developing drugs for rare diseases is this: The significant unmet need, given a dearth of treatment options, will drive demand and thus product uptake. Unfortunately, the reality is more challenging.

• EMA’s new guide to implementing IDMP data standards triggers the countdown to change

  04 March 2021 Remco Munnik / European Pharmaceutical Review

  The IDMP data standards aim to standardise the submission of data on medicinal products. Remco Munnik, Associate Director at Iperion, has been working with the EU focus group creating the EU IDMP Implementation Guide version 2, published late February. He explains why pharma companies need to act now in response to the new guidance and provides practical recommendations for action.

• What does it take to supply COVID-19 vaccines across the globe? Here's how the leading players are working it

  04 March 2021 Fraiser Kansteiner, Eric Sagonowsky / FiercePharma

  As COVID-19 gained steam worldwide last spring, little was known about the disease and the havoc it would wreak on the world. A year later, vaccines offer hope in the global fight against the virus, but it will be a monumental task to produce them and deliver them around the planet.

• COVID-19 Vaccine Makers Overcome Challenges to Ramp Up Production

  03 March 2021 Jill Wechsler / BioPharm International

  To prevent future production delays of critical products, the Biden administration is examining supply chain vulnerabilities for pharmaceutical ingredients as part of a longer-range consideration of products important to public health.