Five years after little Leo Pharma put up its dukes and $115 million in cash to acquire and advance tralokinumab for atopic dermatitis, the Danish biotech has crossed the regulatory finish lines with a year-end approval at the FDA.

The drug will be sold as Adbry and there’s no immediate word on pricing.

This is the 50th new drug approval from CDER this year, totting up to 60 for the year if you add 10 major biologic OKs to the mix. That marks a record number of new approvals from the agency, tipping the scales after hitting 59 in 2020 and 2018. And it’s an indication that despite a long litany of setbacks in CMC in other areas, the drumbeat of new approvals continues at chart-topping levels after the long and disastrous dry spell of the early 2000s — despite a global pandemic.

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Over the 14 years since Immunocore was spun out of MediGene in a quest to develop a gamechanging cancer med, the biotech has raised record sums and undergone a major shakeup on a long roller coaster ride of valuations for investors. But they survived and thrived and today they’re popping the champagne corks to celebrate an FDA approval of their first TCR drug.

Immunocore flagged the FDA’s green light for tebentafusp Wednesday morning by highlighting a series of firsts.

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The FDA’s intensifying scrutiny on accelerated approvals isn’t just putting pressure on drugmakers with marketed products. It is also subtly reshaping the regulatory dynamics.

Case in point: Incyte announced late Tuesday that it has made the “business decision” to withdraw an NDA for parsaclisib, its oral PI3Kδ inhibitor, after deciding that running the confirmatory studies the agency was asking for to support an accelerated approval wouldn’t be worth it.

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Gilead’s $5 billion drug magrolimab has run into a serious setback.

The FDA ordered Gilead to halt enrollment on their studies of the drug in combination with azacitidine after investigators reports revealed an “apparent imbalance” in the suspected unexpected serious adverse reactions between study arms. And the halt is raising questions about Gilead’s plans for a quick pitch to regulators.

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Of the countless decisions Vlad Coric had to make as Biohaven’s CEO over the past seven years, there was one that felt particularly nerve-wracking: Instead of selling to a Big Pharma, the company decided it would commercialize its migraine drug itself.

“I remember some investors yelling and pounding on the table like, you can’t do this. What are you thinking? You’re going to get crushed by AbbVie,” he recalled.

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Pfizer debuted its first TV ad for its Prevnar 20 next-generation pneumococcal pneumonia vaccine. In the 60-second spot, several people (actor portrayals) with their ages listed as 65 or older are shown walking into a clinic as they turn to say they’re getting vaccinated with Prevnar 20 because they’re at risk.

The update to Pfizer’s blockbuster Prevnar 13 vaccine was approved in June, and as its name suggests is a vaccine for 20 serotypes — the original 13 plus seven more that cause pneumococcal disease. Pfizer used to spend heavily on TV ads to promote Prevnar 13 in 2018 and 2019 but cut back its TV budgets in the past two fall and winter seasonal spending cycles. Prevnar had been Pfizer’s top-selling drug, notching sales of just under $6 billion in 2020, and was the world’s top-selling vaccine before the Covid-19 vaccines came to market last year.

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Despite some heavy blowback from analysts, Merck execs maintained an upbeat attitude about the market potential of its chronic cough drug gefapixant. But the confidence may be fading somewhat today as Merck puts out news that the FDA is handing back its application with a CRL.

Dubbed by Merck’s development chief Roy Baynes as a “pipeline in a product” with a variety of potential uses, Merck had fielded positive late-stage data demonstrating the drug’s ability to combat chronic cough. The drug dramatically reduced chronic cough in Phase III, but so did placebo, leaving Merck’s research team with a marginal success on the p-value side of the equation.

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