STAT+: Pharmalittle: We’re reading about a Roivant deal, limited access to medicines and more
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill by 306 to 81 votes to make drug companies stop doing business with some Chinese biotechs within eight years if they want to remain in good standing with the federal government, STAT reports. The BIOSECURE Act would prohibit the U.S. government from contracting with, or providing grants to, companies that do business with a “biotechnology company of concern.” It specifically names five Chinese companies: BGI Genomics, MGI Tech, Complete Genomics, WuXi AppTec, and Wuxi Biologics. The bill would likely need to hitch a ride with a larger legislative vehicle, such as the annual defense bill or government funding legislation, during the lame duck session between the elections and when newly elected officials take office.
Amid calls to expand access to medicines in low- and middle-income countries, a new analysis finds that most of the world’s 20 largest pharmaceutical companies have taken steps to reach patients, but many efforts are yielding decidedly mixed results, STAT tells us. On the one hand, 19 companies have established methods for providing treatments to these countries — but only nine of the drugmakers created comprehensive plans. Moreover, there is no consensus on how to calculate the number of patients being reached, so the approach taken varies widely among products and countries. In addition, most of the companies rely on sales volume to measure access goals, but this can be an imperfect benchmark because it does not ensure that medicines actually reached patients.
Fresh from reporting encouraging results with its oral weight-loss drug, Terns Pharma has moved swiftly ahead with a public offering, seeking to raise upwards of $125 million to fund additional trials of the drug, Pharmaphorum notes. The financing announcement came right after Terns reported Phase 1 results of its oral GLP-1 receptor agonist TERN-601, showing that a once-daily dose of the drug was able to achieve 5.5% weight loss in just 28 days, 4.9% more than a placebo, at the highest dose tested. The result immediately puts Terns among a growing list of drugmakers trying to bring oral alternatives to injectable obesity drugs like Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound, which also includes the two drug giants along with other rivals like Pfizer, Roche and Viking Therapeutics.
