Japan’s Healios K.K. is in discussions with Japan’s Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices Agenc about the regulatory path forward for its Multistem somatic stem cell products, for which it conducted phase II/III trials in ischemic stroke and a phase II trial in acute respiratory distress syndrome.

A dozen years after the Dodd-Frank Act was signed into U.S. law, the SEC adopted a final rule Aug. 25 implementing the law’s so-called “pay-vs.-performance” provisions related to executive compensation.

In an effort to keep up with the advances being made in manufacturing technologies, the European Commission (EC) is updating its 2007 technical guidance on good manufacturing practices for sterile drugs.

U.S. FDA approvals in 2022 are down by more than 30%, while new molecular entity approvals have been cut in half. So far this year, the U.S. FDA has approved 93 drugs and biologics, including expansions into new indications. In comparison with each of the last three years, it is a significant drop. There were 136 approvals in 2021, 143 in 2020 and 134 in 2019 announced by the end of August.

As the PDUFA date looms for Bristol Myers Squibb Co. with its candidate, deucravacitinib, for psoriasis, others – notably Dice Therapeutics Inc. – strive for new solutions to the skin disease, which has remained problematic for many patients despite approvals of multiple drugs in various classes.

Moderna Inc.’s and Pfizer Inc.-Biontech SE’s COVID-19 bivalent boosters could be coming to the U.S. in the first week or so of September – even though the U.S. FDA just received the completed emergency use authorization (EUA) requests for the vaccines this week. The CDC is already taking pre-orders from providers, states and other jurisdictions for the yet-to-be authorized booster doses as part of its fall-winter booster campaign strategy. It also scheduled a Sept. 1-2 meeting of its Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, signaling that it expects the FDA to grant the EUAs by the end of August.