On the same day that Glax­o­SmithK­line sought to as­sure in­vestors that the com­pa­ny’s new R&D team would de­liv­er im­por­tant drugs in the fu­ture, its re­searchers work­ing on Nu­cala (mepolizum­ab) were slapped down in their at­tempt to gain an added OK for COPD.

A pan­el of out­side ex­perts vot­ed 16 to 3 against a mar­ket­ing ap­proval. That isn’t bind­ing, but af­ter the in­ter­nal re­view­ers at the FDA of­fered a scathing re­view of their da­ta, it’s all but a done deal now — bar­ring some un­ex­pect­ed last minute in­ter­ven­tion in its fa­vor.

AD­COMM VOTE: Is the ben­e­fit-risk pro­file ad­e­quate to sup­port ap­proval of #mepolizum­ab as add-on treat­ment to in­haled cor­ti­cos­teroid-based main­te­nance treat­ment for the re­duc­tion of ex­ac­er­ba­tions in pa­tients with #COPD guid­ed by blood eosinophil counts? $GSK
3-Yes
16-No
0-Ab­stain

— SAC Track­er (@FDAad­comm) Ju­ly 25, 2018

The FDA was clear­ly unim­pressed with GSK’s pack­age.

GSK’s drug failed one late-stage test while scor­ing a suc­cess in the oth­er. With on­ly two Phase III stud­ies in this in­di­ca­tion, that left the pan­el to con­sid­er an ap­proval with­out sup­port­ing da­ta from two well-con­trolled stud­ies — the agency gold stan­dard.

There was no dose re­sponse they could find in the two dosage arms, which didn’t help.

The FDA added:

Some key sec­ondary end­points, such as time to first mod­er­ate-to-se­vere COPD ex­ac­er­ba­tion showed nu­mer­i­cal trends fa­vor­ing mepolizum­ab. How­ev­er, there were no con­sis­tent and clin­i­cal­ly mean­ing­ful dif­fer­ences in se­vere COPD ex­ac­er­ba­tion rate, FEV1, or SGRQ be­tween mepolizum­ab 100 mg and place­bo.

GSK’s tri­al de­sign al­so spurred ques­tions, with no base­line col­lec­tion of asth­ma his­to­ry — which could have in­flu­enced the out­come of the study. How will GSK prop­er­ly de­fine the pa­tient pop­u­la­tion for this drug?

Janet Woodcock may have one of the most historically long and drug-intense tenures in FDA history, but her new role is outside of all things pharma and the once-acting FDA commissioner isn’t looking back.

“No I really don’t look back,” Woodcock told Endpoints News via email on Monday morning. “Yes I will be transitioning. Longer discussion on infrastructure needed.”

Pfizer has agreed to pay $290,000 to settle allegations of questionable copay coupon practices in Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, and Vermont from 2014 to 2018.

While the company has not admitted any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, Pfizer has agreed to issue restitution checks to about 5,000 consumers.

A Pfizer spokesperson said the company has “enhanced its co-pay coupons to alleviate the concerns raised by states and agreed to a $30,000 payment to each.”

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.

The area of Ireland famous for Blarney Castle and its cliffsides along the Atlantic Ocean is seeing Merck KGaA expand its commitment there.

The German drug manufacturer is expanding its membrane and filtration manufacturing capabilities in Ireland. The company will invest approximately €440 million ($470 million) to increase membrane manufacturing capacity in Carrigtwohill, Ireland, and build a new manufacturing facility at Blarney Business Park, in County Cork, Ireland.

Twenty House Democrats, including Reps. Katie Porter of California and Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, are calling on Senate leaders to move quickly with a reconciliation bill (meaning they only need a simple majority for passage) with prescription drug pricing reforms, and to include adding new authority for Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

They also called on the Senate to specifically follow suit with the House passage of a $35 per month insulin cap (as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s deadline for a vote on that provision has come and gone), and to cap Medicare Part D costs at $2,000 per year for seniors.

As the cases of monkeypox now sit at well over 100 worldwide and have spread to multiple continents, the orders for any type of vaccine against monkeypox are seeing nations and medical bodies looking to get their hands on anything and everything. And now SIGA Technologies seems to be getting in on the action.

According to Euronews, SIGA Technologies, a pharmaceutical company that is focused on providing medical countermeasures to biological and chemical attacks, is now in talks with several European authorities looking to stockpile its antiviral that can counter monkeypox. The drug known as tecovirimat or Tpoxx was approved by the FDA in 2018 as a vaccine for smallpox but was approved by the European Medicines Agency to also act against monkeypox, cowpox and complications from immunization with vaccinia.

Bristol Myers Squibb is bringing new life to a chemotherapy drug from the old Celgene pipeline as it touts another approval in a rare form of blood cancer affecting young children.

The FDA on Friday approved Vidaza (chemically known as azacitidine) for pediatric patients 1 month and older with newly diagnosed juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML). The new indication marks the first approval for Vidaza in more than a decade, though it’s commonly used to treat acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS).