In a union of two of the hottest trends in the US bio­phar­ma world, ICER is team­ing up with a high-pro­file com­pa­ny to in­te­grate re­al-world ev­i­dence in their as­sess­ment of treat­ment val­ue.

The drug pric­ing watch­dog — for­mal­ly the In­sti­tute for Clin­i­cal and Eco­nom­ic Re­view — said it will uti­lize Ae­tion’s ev­i­dence plat­form in “se­lect up­com­ing as­sess­ments” and their new 24-month re-eval­u­a­tions of drugs grant­ed ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval by the FDA.

Even though ICER doesn’t play an of­fi­cial role in set­ting drug prices, its ver­dicts on whether treat­ments are cost-ef­fec­tive are in­creas­ing­ly shap­ing pay­er at­ti­tude and con­sumer per­cep­tion, as well as, gen­er­al dis­course as the heat­ed de­bate around US drug prices rages on.

Car­olyn Mag­ill

Led by Unit­ed­Health vet Car­olyn Mag­ill, Ae­tion de­rives much of its da­ta from in­sur­ance claims, but it al­so works with elec­tron­ic health records, reg­istries and clin­i­cal tri­als. The FDA and Brigham and Women’s Hos­pi­tal have a pact in place with the com­pa­ny to try pre­dict­ing the re­sults of ran­dom­ized clin­i­cal tri­als in a pi­lot project in­volv­ing sev­en stud­ies.

Scott Got­tlieb, who pushed the in­dus­try to try new things with RWE dur­ing his tenure as FDA com­mis­sion­er, joined Ae­tion’s board a few months af­ter leav­ing the agency.

David Whitrap

For its part, ICER has com­mit­ted to ex­pand­ing its RWE use, not on­ly us­ing ex­ist­ing sources such as man­u­fac­tur­ers and pa­tient or­ga­ni­za­tions but ex­plor­ing ways to gen­er­ate da­ta that can com­ple­ment pub­lished sources. The deal with Ae­tion al­lows them to do it at greater scale, David Whitrap, ICER’s VP of com­mu­ni­ca­tions and out­reach, told End­points News.

Where­as RWE can come in handy for com­par­isons to ex­ist­ing treat­ments and the nat­ur­al trend of cer­tain con­di­tions (such as sick­le cell dis­ease, where ICER is con­duct­ing a re­view of ther­a­pies with Ae­tion’s help), their re­la­tion­ship will be most use­ful in the new process they are pi­lot­ing: re-eval­u­at­ing treat­ments af­ter they’ve been on the mar­ket for sev­er­al years.

“Ran­dom­ized clin­i­cal tri­als re­main the gold stan­dard for de­vel­op­ing un­bi­ased ev­i­dence, but as the FDA is in­creas­ing­ly ap­prov­ing treat­ments based on thin­ner clin­i­cal tri­al da­ta, the en­tire health in­dus­try will need to fill larg­er knowl­edge gaps about how well a new drug ac­tu­al­ly works,” he said. “And RWE is one way to do so.”

The German life science group Sartorius will be picking up French contract manufacturer Polyplus for the price of €2.4 billion, or $2.6 billion.

On Friday, Sartorius announced the acquisition through its French subgroup, Sartorius Stedim Biotech, which will be acquiring Polyplus from private investors ARCHIMED and WP GG Holdings IV. Polyplus has 270 employees and produces materials and components that go into making viral vectors that are used in cell and gene therapies. This includes DNA/RNA reagents as well as plasmid DNA. Polyplus has locations in France, Belgium, China and the US.

The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) recommended nine drugs for approval this week while also giving thumbs up for six expanded indications, including Novo Nordisk’s approved obesity medication Wegovy for younger people. Wegovy is already approved as an obesity treatment in the EU for adults, and the new indication would allow prescriptions for adolescents aged 12 and older.

RNA biotech GreenLight Biosciences has been handed an offer for potential acquisition.

GreenLight said in a release that it has received a non-binding “indication of interest” from Fall Line Endurance Fund to acquire GreenLight’s capital stock for $0.60 per share in cash. The release said any potential agreement between the two parties would depend on certain conditions.

Through a special committee, the biotech will evaluate the offer but added there’s no certainty a deal will go forward. GreenLight will also not make any more announcements until a deal comes through or “otherwise determines” a statement is necessary.

A public T cell biotech’s chief executive has decided to leave the company.

TScan Therapeutics said Friday morning that CEO David Southwell stepped down earlier this week, leaving both his chief executive and board member roles. Filling in is Gavin MacBeath, the company’s CSO and COO. He became the acting CEO on Tuesday, and will continue to remain CSO and COO, TScan’s announcement read.

Paul Stoffels has made it clear that he views cutting jobs at Galapagos as difficult but necessary — but he’s getting creative about it.

Galapagos, headquartered in Mechelen, Belgium, has struck an arrangement with French contract research organization NovAliX to transfer its drug discovery and research activities. While NovAliX is based in Strasbourg, it will take over running the site that Galapagos ran in Romainville, France.