When the FDA ap­proved AM­AG Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ fe­male li­bido drug, Vyleesi, months ago sans an ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee de­spite weak da­ta — con­tro­ver­sy en­sued. But the Mass­a­chu­setts-based drug­mak­er must now con­tend with the reg­u­la­to­ry fall­out of an­oth­er one of its women’s health drugs: Mak­e­na.

Mak­e­na — which has been on the mar­ket for years as a ther­a­py de­signed to cut the risk of preterm birth in preg­nant women — ear­li­er this year failed a post-con­fir­ma­to­ry study. Now, the FDA has set up a meet­ing of in­de­pen­dent ad­vi­sors in Oc­to­ber to fig­ure out whether or not to take it off the shelves.

For long the ther­a­py, a man-made ver­sion of the hor­mone prog­es­terone, was used off-la­bel sourced from un­reg­u­lat­ed con­coc­tions pre­pared by com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies. Even­tu­al­ly, the FDA grant­ed the prod­uct ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval in 2011, de­spite lim­it­ed clin­i­cal da­ta. The man­u­fac­tur­er was ac­quired by AM­AG in 2014. Last year, a pre­filled au­to-in­jec­tor ver­sion with a thin­ner, al­most in­vis­i­ble, nee­dle (ver­sus the orig­i­nal bulky in­tra­mus­cu­lar Mak­e­na in­jec­tion) was en­dorsed by the US reg­u­la­tor.

In March, AM­AG $AM­AG re­vealed the ther­a­py had fiz­zled in the 1,700-pa­tient post-ap­proval PRO­LONG study — blam­ing the fail­ure on the fact that 75% of the pa­tients en­rolled were not from the Unit­ed States, sug­gest­ing that the dif­fer­ence in de­mo­graph­ics had played a role in the set­back.

Back when the FDA orig­i­nal­ly ap­proved Mak­e­na, the agency was “pre­sent­ed with a very dif­fi­cult choice: ac­cept fair­ly lim­it­ed clin­i­cal da­ta (al­beit via spon­sor­ship from the NIH) or con­tin­ue to al­low preg­nant women to re­ceive an in­jec­tion from un­reg­u­lat­ed sources. The Agency clear­ly ac­cept­ed the lim­it­ed clin­i­cal da­ta and grant­ed ap­proval for Mak­e­na as we be­lieve (and spec­u­late) that the true goal was to bring the man­u­fac­tur­ing un­der FDA com­pli­ance,” Cowen’s Ken Cac­cia­tore wrote in a note.

“For these rea­sons, we do not be­lieve that the Agency would now rel­e­gate clin­i­cians and pa­tients to once again sourc­ing this crit­i­cal care prod­uct from un­ap­proved man­u­fac­tur­ing sources.”

As part of its sec­ond-quar­ter re­sults un­veiled in Au­gust, AM­AG said that gener­ic com­pe­ti­tion for Mak­e­na was eat­ing in­to sales, that it had faced sup­ply con­straints re­lat­ing to the prod­uct, that it had de­cid­ed to ex­it the in­tra­mus­cu­lar Mak­e­na mar­ket, and that it had ter­mi­nat­ed an arrange­ment with Pras­co, its au­tho­rized gener­ic part­ner.

Mean­while, AM­AG is bat­tling on oth­er fronts. On Mon­day, the com­pa­ny put out a state­ment ad­mon­ish­ing the ac­tivist hedge fund Cali­gan Part­ners, which has been ac­cu­mu­lat­ing its shares.

“(L)ast month Cali­gan ini­ti­at­ed what ap­pears to be a rushed, ag­gres­sive and mis­lead­ing scheme to seize near con­trol of your AM­AG Board. Now you are es­sen­tial­ly be­ing asked by Cali­gan — as part of a rarely used cor­po­rate ac­tion called a con­sent so­lic­i­ta­tion — to re­move and re­place four mem­bers of the re­cent­ly-re­elect­ed Board as a pre­cur­sor to risky and ill-in­formed changes that Cali­gan wants to make at AM­AG,” the com­pa­ny wrote in a let­ter to share­hold­ers, urg­ing them to dis­re­gard Cali­gan’s cam­paign.

Last month, the com­pa­ny low­ered its full-year fi­nan­cial guid­ance af­ter ex­it­ing the Mak­e­na in­tra­mus­cu­lar mar­ket and re­vis­ing its ex­pec­ta­tions of cira­paran­tag de­vel­op­ment mile­stone rev­enue. Now, the drug­mak­er ex­pects $325 – $355 mil­lion in rev­enue, ver­sus its pre­vi­ous range of $365 – $415 mil­lion.

So­cial im­age: Wes­t­i­form

Medical animation has in recent years become an increasingly important tool for conveying niche information to a varied audience, particularly to those audiences without expertise in the specialist area. Science programmes today, for example, have moved from the piece-to-camera of the university professor explaining how a complex disease mechanism works, to actually showing the viewer first-hand what it might look like to shrink ourselves down to the size of an ant’s foot, and travel inside the human body to witness these processes in action. Effectively communicating a complex disease pathophysiology, or the novel mechanism of action of a new drug, can be complex. This is especially difficult when the audience domain knowledge is limited or non-existent. Medical animation can help with this communication challenge in several ways.
Improved accessibility to visualisation
Visualisation is a core component of our ability to understand a concept. Ask 10 people to visualise an apple, and each will come up with a slightly different image, some apples smaller than others, some more round, some with bites taken. Acceptable, you say, we can move on to the next part of the story. Now ask 10 people to visualise how HIV’s capsid protein gets arranged into the hexamers and pentamers that form the viral capsid that holds HIV’s genetic material. This request may pose a challenge even to someone with some virology knowledge, and it is that inability to effectively visualise what is going on that holds us back from fully understanding the rest of the story. So how does medical animation help us to overcome this visualisation challenge?

As a potentially powerful flu season looms, so does a big test for Roche and its new flu drug, Xofluza. The Swiss giant just got a small boost in advance of that test as the FDA expanded Xofluza’s indication to include patients at high risk of developing flu-related complications.

Xofluza (baloxavir marboxil) was approved last October in the US, the first landmark flu drug approval in 20 years and a much-needed green light for a company that had watched its leading flu drug Tamiflu get eaten alive by generics. Like its predecessor, the pill offered a reduction in flu symptoms but not a cure.

The first-ever Ebola vaccine is on the precipice of approval after the European Medicine’s Agency (EMA) backed the Merck product in this week’s roster of recommendations.

The drugmaker $MRK began developing the vaccine, christened Ervebo, during the West African outbreak that occurred between 2014 and 2016, killing more than 11,000.

The current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has shown case fatality rates of approximately 67%, the agency estimated. Earlier this year, the WHO declared the outbreak — which so far has infected more than 3,000 people — a public health emergency of international concern.