The black box warning appended to the label of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) drug Leqembi (lecanemab) took some on Wall Street mildly aback but failed to surprise others, as analysts mulled what the full approval, granted July 6 by the U.S. FDA, might mean for other developers in the space.
The Association for Accessible Medicines fired off a constitutional challenge in U.S. federal court July 5 to provisions included in Minnesota’s new budget law that would restrict price increases for generic and off-patent drugs.
The U.S. FDA granted Renalytix plc de novo marketing authorization for its prognostic test for chronic kidney disease (CKD). Kidneyintelx is an artificial intelligence-enabled prognostic testing platform to guide treatment decisions for adults with type 2 diabetes and diabetes-related early stage chronic kidney disease.
The U.S. FDA’s draft guidance for predetermined change control plans (PCCP) is a groundbreaking document for med-tech regulation, but stakeholders see a few holes in the draft version. One of the issues for device manufacturers is that the guidance seems to exclude any possibility of inclusion of a new intended use or indication for use in a PCCP, while others seek more detail on how this policy can be applied to the device component of a combination product, two elements that may prove complicated to address in the final guidance.
Rapid point-of-care diagnostics company Lumos Diagnostics Inc. saw its stock shoot up 327% on the news that it finally gained U.S. FDA 510(k) clearance for its Febridx rapid, point-of-care test for bacterial infections. Febridx is a finger prick blood test that can indicate if a person has a bacterial or viral acute respiratory infection within 10 minutes.
Leadless cardiac electrophysiology devices have been around for a while now, but Abbott Laboratories of Abbott Park, Ill., has managed to beat the competition in the market for dual chamber pacing via two leadless devices. The company reported July 5 that the U.S. FDA has approved the Aveir DR, a two-unit device configuration that provides pacing for both the right ventricle and the right atrium and which some analysts believe helps to make Abbott shares an underappreciated asset for investors.
Two separate insider trading tips involving a biopharma acquisition and trial results for Pfizer Inc.’s COVID-19 antiviral, Paxlovid, allegedly netted millions of dollars in “ill-gotten” trading profits, according to U.S. SEC complaints announced June 29.
The U.S. Office of Inspector General (OIG) reported June 28 that it had launched a series of enforcement actions against perpetrators of a variety of forms of health care fraud, including in the areas of telemedicine and opioid abuse. The 78 individuals arraigned in this crackdown are said to be responsible for $2.5 billion.
University of Chicago spinoff Flow Medical Inc. is finalizing its design of a multi-function catheter to diagnose and treat venous thromboembolic disease – boosted by a $1 million private investment to commercialize the device.
Becoming the first gene therapy approved for hemophilia A, Roctavian (valoctocogene roxaparvovec) finally received the U.S. FDA’s blessing on June 29, after developer Biomarin Pharmaceutical Inc. spent nearly three years working to address issues raised in a 2020 complete response letter. The approval came a day prior to the June 30 PDUFA date.