A judge in Delaware has ruled against Astel­las Phar­ma and Gilead in a long-run­ning patent case over Pfiz­er-on­wed Hos­pi­ra’s gener­ic ver­sion of Lex­is­can.

The case kicked off in 2018, af­ter Hos­pi­ra sub­mit­ted an Ab­bre­vi­at­ed New Drug Ap­pli­ca­tion (AN­DA) for ap­proval to mar­ket a gener­ic ver­sion of Gilead’s Lex­is­can. The drug is used in my­ocar­dial per­fu­sion imag­ing (MPI), a type of nu­clear stress test.

Gilead and Astel­las al­leged that Hos­pi­ra’s AN­DA sub­mis­sion for re­gadeno­son in­fringed up­on sev­er­al patents, and sought a de­clara­to­ry judg­ment that Hos­pi­ra’s man­u­fac­tur­ing of the prod­uct would con­sti­tute a di­rect and in­duced in­fringe­ment. Hos­pi­ra de­nied the al­le­ga­tions, as­sert­ing in its de­fense that the patents are in­valid and fil­ing coun­ter­claims seek­ing judg­ments of non­in­fringe­ment.

Af­ter a three-day bench tri­al, Judge Colm Con­nol­ly ruled against Gilead and Astel­las. Con­nol­ly stat­ed that Gilead and Astel­las failed to prove any di­rect in­fringe­ment, and did not meet any bur­den to es­tab­lish that in­fringe­ment was breached. The par­ties are await­ing a fi­nal judge­ment.

The de­ci­sion comes as Astel­las wrote off more than half a bil­lion dol­lars in loss­es last month and gut­ted can­di­dates that were once thought to have mas­sive po­ten­tial. The com­pa­ny booked an “im­pair­ment loss” over two fis­cal quar­ters back in April, about a year af­ter writ­ing off $540 mil­lion fol­low­ing a clin­i­cal hold on its lead gene ther­a­py AT132.

For Gilead, while the com­pa­ny re­mains high on the For­tune 500 list, it suf­fered a set­back ear­li­er this year when the FDA slapped par­tial holds on stud­ies eval­u­at­ing ma­grolimab with azac­i­ti­dine. The FDA lift­ed its par­tial hold on those stud­ies last month, and Gilead said it’s on track for an in­ter­im read­out in 2023.

Two weeks ago, Biohaven hit an all-time high in weekly Nurtec prescriptions. CEO Vlad Coric attributes at least some of that success to a new interactive Twitter campaign that encourages patients to free their feed of potential migraine triggers.

Earlier this month, Biohaven in partnership with Twitter launched the #RelieveYourFeed campaign that allows users to customize their app settings based on their migraine triggers.

Over the past few months, oncologists have been talking a lot about the ASCO conference. Not surprising considering its import and the study data presented, but what may be less expected is the second most talked about topic of health equity.

That’s according to data from The Harris Poll and the new expert network the researcher is building out. While the company has been doing deep data dives into specific health issues or conditions for pharma clients, it’s now monitoring influencer networks of therapy area specialists to find out what experts are really thinking about.

Earlier this year, Novartis touted its radioligand as a major piece to counter competition in the cancer space. However, the physical production of its products has had anything but a smooth ride.

In May, Novartis had to suspend production of Lutathera and Pluvicto, its two primary radiotherapies. According to the company, this was done out of an abundance of caution as a result of potential quality issues identified in its manufacturing. The production suspension impacts the commercial and clinical trial supply of the products.

The rise of pharma environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts in the past two years has been meteoric as investors turn their attention to sustainable funding. However, investors aren’t the only ones watching. Patients are beginning to tune into pharmas’ ESG promises too.

Patient advocacy groups familiar with ESG regard it as an important issue and want to be included in helping pharma companies set ESG policies and targets, according to a new report from PatientView. That’s quite different from what the investment community wants across a variety of Gartner’s defined financial, competitive, strategic and perception goals.