Good morning, everyone. Damian Garde here filling in for Ed Silverman in the waning days of what is, at least around these parts, a mercifully truncated working week. Whether you’re observing that holiday or simply juggling browser tabs and TV screens to keep tabs on a certain global sporting spectacle, we wish you a painless path to the weekend. In the meantime, here are a few tidbits to get your day started. And, as always, if you hear something interesting, do let us know. …
GSK is pulling a top-selling treatment for blood cancer off the U.S. market after it failed in a key clinical trial, Reuters reports. The drug, Blenrep, won accelerated FDA approval in 2020 for patients with advanced multiple myeloma that had endured despite four lines of treatment. Earlier this month, Blenrep failed to delay disease progression compared to a standard treatment in a pivotal study, stoking fears the FDA might revoke its approval.
Shionogi won emergency authorization in Japan for an oral Covid-19 treatment that requires far fewer pills than rival medicines from Pfizer and Merck, according to Bloomberg. Treatment with Shionogi’s Xocova requires seven pills over five days, while Pfizer’s Paxlovid and Merck’s Lagevrio demand between 30 and 40 pills over the same period. The company is working on expanding Xocova’s use around the world, including by running a Phase 3 study in the U.S.
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