About two months after Astrazeneca plc said its application for sipavibart (AZD-3152) had been accepted by the EMA for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) against COVID-19 in immunocompromised people, Invivyd Inc. unveiled positive 180-day exploratory efficacy data from the company’s ongoing Canopy phase III trial with Pemgarda (pemivibart) in the same indication – and made known less happy news from regulators on the other side of the pond.

Vericel Corp.’s Maci for repairing cartilage defects in the knee has been approved by the U.S. FDA via a supplemental biologics license application. Using a patient’s own cells cultured on a porcine collagen membrane, Maci Arthro is delivered arthroscopically and allows for repair of knee cartilage defects up to 4 cm².

Product liability is always a point of concern for manufacturers of medical devices and other U.S. FDA-regulated products, and the broad contours of product liability jurisprudence are well known by corporate counsel. However, artificial intelligence products are rapidly pressing their way into routine clinical use, representing a technological shift that may occasionally deviate from the existing rules of the road where product liability is concerned.

The U.S. CMS said its Medicare administrative contractors withdrew a draft local coverage determination that would have restricted the use of surveillance testing for allograft rejection.

Invenra Inc.’s bispecific antibody, INV-724, developed for the treatment of neuroblastoma, has been awarded orphan drug and rare pediatric disease designations by the FDA.

Five months after getting a complete response letter from the U.S. FDA, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. has landed conditional European marketing approval for odronextamab, a bispecific antibody for treating lymphoma. Now named Ordspono, the approval is for treating adult patients with relapsed or refractory follicular lymphoma or diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, after two or more lines of therapy. The European Commission also approved Merck & Co. Inc.’s Winrevair (sotatercept) for pulmonary arterial hypertension and ARS Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s Eurneffy (inhaled epinephrine) for anaphylaxis.

TGA opened a consultation for regulation of assistive technologies, a key element of which is to make determinations about the regulatory status of some of these products. While the agency makes clear that some items that are currently unregulated may soon be subject to regulation, one of the more innocuous-seeming articles that may fall under regulation is the common and seemingly innocuous wig.

Simcere Zaiming Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. has obtained clinical trial approval from China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) for SIM-0508, a small-molecule inhibitor of DNA polymerase θ (POLθ), allowing initiation of clinical trials in locally advanced or metastatic solid tumors.

Ractigen Therapeutics Co. Ltd.’s small activating RNA (saRNA) therapeutic, RAG-18, has been awarded U.S. orphan drug designation for the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and Becker muscular dystrophy.