The FDA has awarded U.S. orphan drug designation to Eydisbio Inc.’s EYD-001 (formerly HS-276), a highly selective and potent, orally bioavailable TAK1 inhibitor for the treatment of systemic sclerosis. Eydisbio plans to initiate clinical trials in the near future.

The U.S. FDA announced a class I recall declared by Baxter Healthcare Corp., of Deerfield, Ill., for the automated compounding inlets used with the company’s Exactomix compounding systems due to the risk of particulate matter in the inlets.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit remanded a patent case to district court after finding that a patent applicant need not invoke identical terminology when describing a central feature of a catheter technology across multiple patents.

With two drugs cleared by the U.S. FDA for Niemann-Pick disease type C (NPC) in less than seven days, Wall Street was pondering the differences between the compounds, given what’s known so far about each. Most recently, the FDA approved Intrabio Inc.’s Aqneursa (levacetylleucine) on its PDUFA date for the treatment of neurological manifestations of NPC in adults and pediatric patients weighing at least 15 kg, making Aqneursa the only approved stand-alone therapy indicated for NPC. On Sept. 20, Zevra Therapeutics Inc. won FDA clearance for Miplyffa (arimoclomol) as the first treatment for NPC.

The FDA has cleared an IND application for a phase I/II study of KSQ-004EX, KSQ Therapeutics Inc.’s second engineered tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (eTIL) program. KSQ-004EX consists of TIL in which the genes encoding SOCS1 and Regnase-1 are inactivated using CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing.

Both the biotech industry and Hong Kong have become strategic points for China as the People’s Republic of China works to lay a biotech “belt and road” through Asia to expand global influence.