Roche is stacking up approvals for its flagship checkpoint inhibitor in the lucrative field of lung cancer. On Friday, the Swiss drugmaker revealed that the European Commission had endorsed the use of Tecentriq in combination with chemotherapy as the first line of defense in certain patients with advanced non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

The approval comes on the basis of the 723-patient IMpower130 study, which tested the drug plus chemo against chemo alone, in patients with stage IV metastatic non-squamous NSCLC, who are not carrying EGFR or ALK mutations.

The “mind-blowing” field of psychedelic research is getting its first major US home, one that could help legitimize a field that has slowly crept out of the shadows over the last two decades.

Johns Hopkins Medicine announced Wednesday they are opening what they believe to be the first center for psychedelic research in the country and the largest in the world.

The Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins Medicine will include a team of 11 faculty scientists and post-docs investigating the potential use of LSD and psilocybin (the chemical found in magic mushrooms) — among other psychedelics — to impact human creativity and well-being and to treat a host of disorders, including opioid addiction, Alzheimer’s disease and PTSD.

Struggling with $5 billion in debt and a maelstrom of legal claims over their alleged role in a nationwide epidemic of opioid abuse, Mallinckrodt has reportedly been consulting with lawyers and restructuring pros to see if they should restructure the company in bankruptcy.

Bloomberg reported that the biopharma company — frequently fingered as one of the worst players involved in price gouging — has hired Latham & Watkins along with AlixPartners to explore their options. And that triggered a rout as investors fled the stock $MNK, sending its shares down 44% after the bell.

Korean news outlets are reporting that an executive at a major Korean pharmaceutical company has been arrested for conducting illegal clinical tests on company researchers.

Citing the Seoul Western District Prosecutors’ Office and other officials, The Korea Times reported that Auh Jin of Ahn-Gook Pharmaceutical was arrested for carrying out illegal tests on the company’s own researchers in violation of the country’s pharmacy law. The Korea Herald similarly reported that Jin had been arrested.

A US judge has thwarted efforts by major drug manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies to reject claims that they played a pivotal role behind the opioid crisis that has ravaged the United States.

In doing so, district judge Dan Polster has cleared the path for a scheduled landmark trial, even as he pushes for a nationwide settlement, noted a Reuters report on Tuesday. Polster is presiding over more than 2,000 opioid lawsuits filed by states, counties and cities. Opioid-related overdoses have claimed almost 400,000 lives from 1999 to 2017, the CDC estimates.

About two weeks after AstraZeneca’s $AZN unveiled its diabetes treatment Farxiga cut the risk of CV death or the worsening of heart failure in patients with heart disease, in a landmark trial — over the weekend the British drugmaker presented detailed data at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress in Paris.

The results emanated from the 4,744-patient DAPA-HF trial, which tested Farxiga in patients with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) — in which the heart muscle is not able to contract amply and, therefore, expels less oxygen-rich blood into the body — on standard of care treatment, including those with and without type-II diabetes.