→ Mayo Clin­ic is open­ing up its sprawl­ing clin­i­cal data­base to nfer­ence, the Cam­bridge, MA-based AI start­up it’s long part­nered with and re­cent­ly backed in a $60 mil­lion round. The project aims to dig­i­tize 25 mil­lion tis­sue slides with­in the next 2 to 2.5 years, Fierce­Biotech re­port­ed, in ad­di­tion to an­no­tat­ing, link­ing and tag­ging writ­ten physi­cian notes. Af­ter sort­ing through the da­ta, nfer­ence will use the plat­form to iden­ti­fy new tar­gets and bio­mark­ers as well as ap­ply it in clin­i­cal tri­al re­cruit­ment and re­al-world ev­i­dence gen­er­a­tion.

→ Cypri­um Ther­a­peu­tics, one of the star­tups in­cu­bat­ed by Fortress Biotech, has been grant­ed rare pe­di­atric dis­ease des­ig­na­tion by the FDA for cop­per his­tid­i­nate, al­so re­ferred to as CUTX-101, for the treat­ment of Menkes dis­ease. The drug — which is de­signed to boost blood and brain cop­per lev­els — has al­so gained or­phan and fast track sta­tus.

→ In an ex­pan­sion of its glob­al foot­print, WuXi Bi­o­log­ics has ac­quired a drug prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ing plant from Bay­er. The fa­cil­i­ty, lo­cat­ed in Lev­erkusen, Ger­many, will al­so serve as a back-up pro­duc­tion site for Bay­er’s Ko­val­try, a he­mo­phil­ia A treat­ment, once WuXi takes over.

→ South Ko­rea’s Cell­tri­on has plans to build a new plant in Chi­na to man­u­fac­ture its biosim­i­lars as it ad­vances a Rem­i­cade copy­cat in the coun­try. Chair­man Jung-jin Seo said at the JP Mor­gan con­fer­ence that the fa­cil­i­ty will have a pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty of 120,000 liters, ac­cord­ing to Yon­hap News Agency.

→ No­var­tis, J&J, Eli Lil­ly, Pfiz­er and GSK are join­ing the Gates Foun­da­tion on a phil­an­thropic com­mu­ni­ty-based pri­ma­ry health­care ini­tia­tive in six African coun­tries led by two char­i­ties. The drug­mak­ers will “con­tribute dis­ease-spe­cif­ic ex­per­tise and ex­pe­ri­ence in the dis­cov­ery and de­vel­op­ment of new tools, which will sup­ple­ment the com­mu­ni­ty health work­er mod­els.” They would al­so each con­tribute $1.5 mil­lion to the project.

With little explanation for why Merck’s potential Covid-19 antiviral was less effective in reducing Covid hospitalizations and deaths in a full analysis of a Phase III trial versus an interim look, the FDA’s antimicrobial drugs advisory committee on Tuesday voted 13-10 in favor of the pill’s benefits outweighing the risks for adults within 5 days of developing Covid symptoms.

Molnupiravir will likely be authorized by FDA in the coming days for adults with mild or moderate Covid-19. While Pfizer’s antiviral may prove to be more effective, Merck’s pill will be another weapon in the armamentarium of Covid-19 treatments for countries around the world, adding to the mAb treatments already in use in the outpatient space from Regeneron, Eli Lilly and Vir/GlaxoSmithKline.

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After years as the top spending pharma TV advertiser, AbbVie’s Humira brand finally downshifted earlier this year, ceding much of its marketing budget to up-and-coming sibling meds Skyrizi and Rinvoq. However, now Humira is back on TV with ads for another condition — Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS).

The chronic and painful skin condition results in lumps and abscesses caused by inflammation or infection of sweat glands, most often in the armpits or groin. Humira was first approved to treat HS in 2015 and remains the only FDA-approved drug for the condition. Two TV ads both note more than 30,000 people with HS have been prescribed Humira.