When the FDA’s Vac­cines and Re­lat­ed Bi­o­log­i­cal Prod­ucts Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee meets next month to dis­cuss the de­vel­op­ment and au­tho­riza­tion of Covid-19 vac­cines, the chair­woman won’t be there.

Hana El Sahly

Hana El Sahly has re­cused her­self from the ex­pert pan­el’s re­view of the top­ic, cit­ing her role as a lead in­ves­ti­ga­tor in Mod­er­na’s Phase III tri­al, Reuters re­port­ed. An as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor of vi­rol­o­gy and mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gy at Bay­lor Col­lege of Med­i­cine in Hous­ton, El Sahly was ap­point­ed the chair­woman last year.

The FDA has yet to re­lease the ros­ter for the Oct. 22 meet­ing. The vac­cine ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee cur­rent­ly con­sists of 15 vot­ing mem­bers; they are set to de­lib­er­ate on Covid-19 vac­cines gen­er­al­ly in­stead of de­bat­ing any spe­cif­ic ap­pli­ca­tion.

While this marks the first in­stance an FDA ad­vi­sor has stepped aside due to po­ten­tial or per­ceived con­flict of in­ter­est, it fol­lows two high-pro­file res­ig­na­tions from Mod­er­na’s board for the same rea­son.

Mon­cef Slaoui, the for­mer head of Glax­o­SmithK­line’s vac­cines de­part­ment, stepped off once the White House tapped him as the chief sci­en­tif­ic ad­vi­sor of Op­er­a­tion Warp Speed. Two months lat­er, Brigham and Women’s pres­i­dent Eliz­a­beth Nabel fol­lowed in his foot­steps as her hos­pi­tal was set to be a site for Mod­er­na’s Phase III tri­al.

Work­ing on the broad­er, na­tion­al lev­el, El Sahly re­cent­ly de­scribed her role to the lo­cal af­fil­i­ate ABC13: “Re­view­ing the re­lat­ed doc­u­ments, the com­mu­ni­ca­tions that sort of laid the ground for the process of get­ting the study start­ed.”

Al­though reg­u­la­tors are not bound to fol­low the ad­comm’s rec­om­men­da­tions, this par­tic­u­lar meet­ing is spe­cial. FDA com­mis­sion­er Stephen Hahn has spot­light­ed the event — which will be open to the pub­lic — as an il­lus­tra­tion of the kind of trans­paren­cy and sci­ence-dri­ven ap­proach that his agency is striv­ing for.

For a look at all End­points News coro­n­avirus sto­ries, check out our spe­cial news chan­nel.

While the US biosimilars industry has generally been a disappointment since its inception, with FDA approving 33 biosimilars since 2015, just a fraction of those have immediately followed their approvals with launches. And more than a handful of biosimilars for two of the biggest blockbusters of all time — AbbVie’s Humira and Amgen’s Enbrel — remain approved by FDA but still have not launched because of legal settlements.

As President Biden’s Build Back Better Act — and, with it, potentially the Democrats’ last shot at major drug pricing reforms in the foreseeable future — remains on life support, the Congressional Budget Office isn’t helping their case.

The CBO last week released a new slide deck, outlining an update to its model on how Medicare negotiations might take a bite out of new drugs making it to market. The new model estimates a 10% long-term reduction in the number of new drugs, whereas a previous CBO report from August estimated that 8% fewer new drugs will enter the market over 30 years.

As the hype surrounding Pfizer’s antiviral Covid-19 pill swirls, the pharma announced that it will build a production facility in France to make the drug as a part of a five-year investment.

Pfizer will team up with Novasep to install equipment and initiate tech transfer and on-site development at Novasep’s Mourenx facility. The move is a part of a $594 million investment in France.

“We are of course proud to contribute to the manufacturing of this medicine which has shown in clinical trials to have a positive impact on hospitalization among at-risk Covid-19 patients,” Novasep’s CEO Michel Spagnol said in a statement. “This contract also validates our investment strategy for several years and our focus on small molecules.”