WASHINGTON — Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar on Thursday asked the FDA to develop a working group to consider whether importation of certain prescription drugs might help bring drug prices down. “We look forward to working with [FDA] Commissioner [Scott] Gottlieb and the FDA to explore how importation could help address price… Read More »

Martin Shkreli’s former company is losing money, watching sales of its famously costly medicine slip while considering yet another name change. Vyera Pharmaceuticals, formerly called Turing Pharmaceuticals, lost more than $1 million in the first quarter of 2018, according to financial documents obtained by STAT. Sales, driven by the $750-a-pill Daraprim, have been on the… Read More »

A new laser-sonic scanner technique may help women avoid the discomfort of traditional mammography procedures by offering an alternative, more efficient way to screen for breast cancer, according to a recent study. Although mammograms are effective in detecting breast cancer and reducing deaths from the disease, many women avoid having their mammograms taken as often… Read More »

Two senators have asked prominent pharmacy benefit managers to address accusations from the Trump administration’s top health official that PBMs are preventing drug manufacturers from lowering prices. In letters to nine PBMs, including Express Scripts, CVS Health and OptumRx, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Tina Smith, D-Minn., asked the companies to explain statements made by… Read More »

BSIP/UIG via Getty Images For most women under 65, a visit to the gynecologist often includes an unpleasant necessity: a Pap smear to check for cervical cancer risk. The test involves letting a doctor or nurse scrape cells from the back of the cervix, which are visually inspected for signs of abnormality. There’s a simpler… Read More »

Dive Brief: Alexion Pharmaceuticals is trying to get a speedy approval of its Soliris follow-on drug, announcing Tuesday it used a valuable fast pass that shaves down the regulatory review time by several months. Though it normally takes about a year for the Food and Drug Administration to clear or reject a Biologics Licensing Application… Read More »

The FDA’s breakthrough therapy designation program has led to faster approval times for cancer drugs but not necessarily better or safer drugs, according to an analysis of recent approvals. A review of cancer drugs approved from 2012 through 2017 showed that drugs receiving breakthrough therapy designation from the FDA reached the market 2 years faster… Read More »

Because the new SMA drug is a liquid therapy it penetrates the whole body, making drug levels easier to monitor in peripheral blood.

  U.S. women are less likely than men to get statins after heart attack. That discrepancy may explain why death rates for women are higher.

One of the companies developing CAR-T therapies that don’t require patients to have their own T cells harvested has developed an architecture that it said could streamline manufacturing and improve safety. French biotech firm Cellectis said Tuesday that it had published a study describing the development of CubiCAR, an “all-in-one” architecture that embeds a multi-function… Read More »