Pharma News

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Descovy (emtricitabine 200 mg and tenofovir alafenamide 25 mg) in at-risk adults and adolescents weighing at least 35kg for HIV-1 pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to reduce the risk of HIV-1 infection from sex, excluding those who have receptive vaginal sex. Descovy is not indicated in individuals at risk of HIV-1 infection from receptive vaginal sex because the effectivness in this population has not been evaluated.

Of an estimated 6,500 to 7,000 known rare diseases, only a fraction – maybe 5% – have U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved treatments. To increase that percentage, the National Institutes of Health has awarded approximately $31 million in grants in fiscal year 2019 to 20 teams – including five new groups -- of scientists, clinicians, patients, families and patient advocates to study a wide range of rare diseases. An additional $7 million has been awarded to a separate data coordinating center to support these research efforts.

Children born to women who have high blood levels of lead are more likely be overweight or obese, compared to those whose mothers have low levels of lead in their blood, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health and Health Resources and Services Administration. The study was conducted by Xiaobin Wang, M.D., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, and colleagues. It appears in JAMA Network Open.

IIHMR University will celebrate its 35th Foundation day on 5th October 2019. Apart from the much-awaited cultural program and alumni meet, IIHMR U is all set to utilize the prestigious occasion of its 35th Foundation Day to desensitize and wake young minds up to the perils of Diabetes. India is in a precarious situation as the rise of Non-communicable diseases such as diabetes are pushing the nation’s complete health goals far behind.

US based, Myaln reported that they will invest one billion USD in the next 5 to 6 years on capex in India by understanding importance of the India's position in world pharma supply-chain, and pitched for the government incentivising research and development activities. Mylan had been investing close to about 400 to 450 mn USD towards Capex every year and half of it in India.

Novartis announced an important step in reimagining medicine by founding the Novartis AI innovation lab and by selecting Microsoft as its strategic AI and data-science partner for this effort. The new lab aims to bolster Novartis AI capabilities from research through commercialization and help accelerate the discovery and development of transformative medicines for patients worldwide.

Roche presented positive results from the Phase III IMvigor130 study evaluating Tecentriq® (atezolizumab) plus platinum-based chemotherapy versus chemotherapy alone for the first-line (initial) treatment of people with previously untreated locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma (mUC) eligible and ineligible for cisplatin chemotherapy. In the study, Tecentriq plus chemotherapy showed a statistically significant improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) compared with platinum-based chemotherapy alone (median PFS=8.2 versus 6.3 months; hazard ratio (HR)=0.82, 95% CI: 0.70-0.96; p=0.007).

U.S. Food and Drug Administration is informing patients, health care professionals, IT staff in health care facilities and manufacturers of a set of cybersecurity vulnerabilities, referred to as “URGENT/11,” that—if exploited by a remote attacker—may introduce risks for medical devices and hospital networks. URGENT/11 affects several operating systems that may then impact certain medical devices connected to a communications network, such as wi-fi and public or home Internet, as well as other connected equipment such as routers, connected phones and other critical infrastructure equipment.

National Institutes of Health researchers, along with researchers at Siemens, have developed a high-performance, low magnetic-field MRI system that vastly improves image quality of the lungs and other internal structures of the human body. The new system is more compatible with interventional devices that could greatly enhance image-guided procedures that diagnose and treat disease, and the system makes medical imaging more affordable and accessible for patients.

A new study published this week online in Emerging Infectious Diseases suggests that transmission of a protozoan parasite from insects may also cause leishmaniasis-like symptoms in people. The parasite, however, does not respond to treatment with standard leishmaniasis drugs. The research was conducted by scientists at the Federal Universities of Sergipe and São Carlos, the University of São Paulo, and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, all in Brazil, along with investigators at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.