Alex­is Smith was tired of be­ing ashamed of her eczema. That’s why, as a 19-year-old in 2016, she post­ed side-by-side pho­tos of her face with and with­out make­up.

The lev­el of pos­i­tive out­reach she re­ceived was “very sur­pris­ing,” and the eczema ad­vo­cate con­tin­ues to doc­u­ment her jour­ney on so­cial me­dia. She’s al­so one of the voic­es in a new Ab­b­Vie-spon­sored doc­u­men­tary about liv­ing with the de­bil­i­tat­ing skin con­di­tion.

“Eczema is so much more than a rash,” she told End­points News. It’s scratch­ing, dis­com­fort, sleep­less nights, and iso­la­tion.

The 13-minute doc­u­men­tary, ti­tled “Un­der My Skin: Un­told Sto­ries of Life with Eczema,” was di­rect­ed by Red­g­lass Pic­tures and de­buted at South by South­west in Austin, TX. Start­ing in April, it can be streamed on The Roku Chan­nel.

Like Ab­b­Vie’s last doc­u­men­tary fea­tur­ing eczema pa­tients, “Skin: Our Bar­ri­er to the World” cre­at­ed by Glob­al­Skin, the film seeks to raise aware­ness for the phys­i­cal and men­tal toll of eczema pa­tients. How­ev­er, the new film en­cour­ages pa­tients to “talk to a doc­tor about a cus­tomized care plan that’s right for them.”

While the cam­paign is un­brand­ed, it fea­tures a QR code that leads to Ab­b­Vie’s “eczemaHQ” web­site that con­tains in­for­ma­tion about what caus­es eczema, types of eczema and treat­ments, in­clud­ing a link to the com­pa­ny’s Rin­voq. More than 31 mil­lion Amer­i­cans suf­fer from eczema, ac­cord­ing to Ab­b­Vie, and up to half say they avoid so­cial in­ter­ac­tions be­cause of it, the Na­tion­al Eczema Foun­da­tion re­ports.

Mike Ran­court

Rin­voq was ap­proved in 2022 for adults and chil­dren 12 years and old­er with se­vere atopic der­mati­tis, a com­mon form of eczema, who did not re­spond to pre­vi­ous treat­ment. It con­tends with Dupix­ent, Sanofi and Re­gen­eron’s block­buster eczema drug that the French phar­ma es­ti­mat­ed would reach peak sales of €13 bil­lion. Ear­li­er this week, Der­ma­vant un­veiled some late-stage da­ta that sug­gest its plaque pso­ri­a­sis-ap­proved cream Vta­ma al­so worked in pa­tients with atopic der­mati­tis, and the com­pa­ny said it would seek a la­bel ex­pan­sion.

“‘Un­der My Skin’ aims to help shed light on the im­pact of eczema through the lens of peo­ple liv­ing with the dis­ease while al­so high­light­ing the re­silient and sup­port­ive spir­it with­in the eczema com­mu­ni­ty,” Mike Ran­court, Ab­b­Vie’s VP of US der­ma­tol­ogy, said in a news re­lease.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”

Thermo Fisher Scientific is putting down more roots in the Bay Area.

The manufacturer opened the doors to a new cell therapy manufacturing facility next to the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center’s Mission Bay campus and on the university’s campus.

UCSF and Thermo Fisher have had a partnership since 2021, with the new site focusing on manufacturing cell therapeutics for certain cancers, including glioblastoma and multiple myeloma. The new site plans to use Thermo Fisher’s expertise in manufacturing services to help UCSF accelerate the development of cell therapies and eventually get them into the clinic, said Dan Herring, the general manager of cell therapy services at Thermo Fisher, in an interview with Endpoints News.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

Catalent will be manufacturing a low-cost version of the opioid overdose treatment naloxone as part of a contract with Harm Reduction Therapeutics.

Catalent plans to manufacture the treatment at its facility in Morrisville, NC. No financial details on the deal were disclosed.

Harm Reduction was granted priority review status for the NDA on its spray last year. The company has been working on a naloxone product since 2017. It is anticipating approval in July of this year and a US launch in early 2024.

Last year, South African-based vaccine manufacturer Aspen Pharmacare was facing reports that it had not received a single order for its manufactured Covid-19 shots and that manufacturing lines were sitting idle. But now the vaccine producer is looking to turn things around.

Aspen’s disclosure of its financial results in March unveiled that manufacturing revenue had decreased by 12% to R 603 million ($33.8 million), which Lorraine Hill, Aspen Group’s COO, said is attributable to lower Covid vaccine sales.