The EMA is putting EU member states on alert over the shortage of two drugs that counter heart attacks due to an uptick in demand.

On Friday, the EMA sent out a warning that two Boehringer Ingelheim drugs are experiencing a shortage: Actilyse and Metalyse. The drugs are used as emergency treatments for adults experiencing acute myocardial infarction, or a heart attack, by dissolving blood clots that have formed in the blood vessels.

Back in April, Amgen said it was encouraged by the solicitor general’s anticipated review of its Supreme Court petition to rehear a Repatha patent case. They’re likely much less optimistic about the outcome now.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a recent 27-page brief that Amgen’s arguments “lack merit and further review is not warranted.”

The case traces back to a suit filed in 2014 against Sanofi and Regeneron’s Praluent, which ended up beating Amgen’s PCSK9 blockbuster Repatha to market by a month just a year later.

Four experts from the FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence took to the New England Journal of Medicine yesterday to make the case for not only improving the agency’s ability to expeditiously pull dangling accelerated approvals when, on the rare occasion, confirmatory trials fail, but also better building “quality and efficiency into the AA on-ramp.”

The timely perspective arrives as Congress has exactly one week left to draft, release and sign off on the reauthorized user fee deals before layoff notices will be sent to drug reviewers. That package, which is likely to hitch a ride with the continuing resolution, may or may not include several policy riders (opposed by Republicans), including one that would allow the FDA to require confirmatory trials to be underway before an AA is granted, and would improve the process by which FDA can withdraw AAs.

Novartis stands to lose more than a quarter billion dollars in sales this year if Gilenya generics are allowed to market. So it’s taking the fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

The Swiss pharma giant announced on Wednesday that a US federal appeals court has refused to rehear its Gilenya patent case against private Chinese biotech HEC Pharm. Next up? Novartis plans on petitioning the Supreme Court to uphold the validity of its patent No. 9,187,405, referred to in court documents as the ‘405 patent, covering a 0.5 mg dosing regimen of the multiple sclerosis drug.