Pharmacy chains sue Bausch Health, other drugmakers for overcharging for diabetes drug

Walgreens Boots Alliance, Bausch Health, Assertio Therapeutics, Lupin Limited | December 03, 2019

Three pharmacy chains, including Walgreens Boots Alliance, have filed a lawsuit against drugmakers Bausch Health Inc, Assertio Therapeutics and Lupin Ltd, seeking damages for overcharging for Bausch’s diabetes drug Glumetza. The lawsuit, filed on Monday, alleges that Assertio and Lupin struck a deal with units of Bausch to delay the entry of their generic versions of Glumetza and allowed the companies to maintain a monopoly in the sale of the branded drug and its generic copies. Bausch, Assertio and Lupin did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment. Albertson Companies Inc ABS.N and Kroger Inc were among the other defendants.

Spotlight

Welcome to Pharmaprojects’ 2023 review of trends in pharmaceutical R&D. For over 30 years now, I’ve been taking an annual look at the evolution of pharma R&D, and in this article, I’llexamine the state of play at the start of 2023.

Spotlight

Welcome to Pharmaprojects’ 2023 review of trends in pharmaceutical R&D. For over 30 years now, I’ve been taking an annual look at the evolution of pharma R&D, and in this article, I’llexamine the state of play at the start of 2023.

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BUSINESS INSIGHTS, PHARMA TECH

Cerner Enviza Collaborates with FDA to Develop Innovative AI Tools for Drug Safety and Real-World Evidence Studies

prnewswire | April 11, 2023

Cerner Enviza, an Oracle company, along with John Snow Labs, are now helping support the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's drug safety Sentinel Initiative. By developing artificial intelligence (AI) tools aimed at extracting critical information from clinical notes within electronic health records (EHR), Oracle and John Snow will aid the FDA in better understanding the effects of medicines on large populations. Looking at the asthma drug, montelukast, and its possibility of mental health side effects, this two-year project will demonstrate how the use of machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) technology with unstructured data may help fill gaps in knowledge. Cerner Enviza leverages decades of life sciences expertise spanning commercial, real world, clinical and regulatory research. This includes working with a broad range of Oracle provider networks to help accelerate the discovery, development, and deployment of health insights and therapies. John Snow Labs is known for its AI and NLP in healthcare and is the developer of the Spark NLP library. Together, Cerner Enviza and John Snow Labs will develop a new methodology to enhance computerized queries, or phenotyping, of digital patient data and clinical notes to support pharmacoepidemiology. Cerner Enviza, who will lead the team, was chosen by the Sentinel Innovation Center, who is headed by Mass General Brigham and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. "Development and evaluation of tools that can enhance our ability to utilize unstructured EHR data is a key strategic priority for the Sentinel Innovation Center. We look forward to this new relationship and exciting initiative led by Cerner Enviza," said Rishi Desai, Ph.D., Mass General Brigham executive leadership team member, Sentinel Innovation Center. Traditional manual methods for analyzing clinician notes often can be a bottleneck for fully understanding the symptoms and outcomes that patients experience at the population level. However, advances in AI offer a scalable and transportable NLP processes. "This is an incredible opportunity to work with these exceptional leaders to use Oracle's de-identified EHR data to help transform unstructured clinical notes into validated and useable data for physicians and researchers," said Mike Kelly, global head, Cerner Enviza. "Connected technologies and unified data can accelerate innovation and, in turn, help providers realize better recommendations and outcomes for their patients." "We are thrilled to team with Cerner Enviza to apply NLP in such an important real-world evidence project," said David Talby, CTO, John Snow Labs. "We're honored by the Sentinel Innovation Center's vote of confidence in our joint ability to help investigate this use case. Together, Cerner Enviza and John Snow Labs have all the right expertise, data, and technology to make it happen." The project known as the Multi-source Observational Safety Study for Advanced Information Classification Using NLP (MOSAIC-NLP) is also supported by the participation of Children's Hospital of Orange County, National Jewish Health, and Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute who will provide clinical expertise and consulting. About John Snow Labs John Snow Labs is an AI and NLP company that provides software, models, and data to help healthcare and life science organizations put AI to good use. The company is the developer of Spark NLP and host of the NLP Summit.

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BUSINESS INSIGHTS, PHARMACY MARKET

Hovione and Laxxon Medical Establish an Agreement for the cGMP Production of 3D Screen Printed Pharmaceutical Applications

PRNewswire | March 23, 2023

Hovione and Laxxon Medical announced a strategic collaboration to advance the use of 3D screen printing technologies for the pharmaceutical industry. This partnership combines Laxxon´s expertise in 3D screen printing, based on their SPID®-Technology, with Hovione's product & process development, engineering and manufacturing expertise in pharmaceutical applications. Under the terms of the agreement, Hovione will establish the Laxxon Medical 3D screen printing technology at Hovione's cGMP production sites first in Portugal and later in the USA. The 3D technology displays numerous advantages including the potential to produce unique or customized dosage forms with characteristics that cannot be achieved with conventional dosage forms, the ability to create tablets of any shape and size, the option to easily adjust the number of active substances and individual components in the composition of the tablet and even to set the dosage individually for each patient for personalized medicines. "Laxxon is thrilled to establish a long-term partnership with Hovione." said Klaus Kuehne, COO of Laxxon Medical. "This partnership will serve as a great accelerator in establishing 3D screen printing within the pharmaceutical industry thus accelerating our ability to serve our customers." "Hovione has a global reputation for their pharmaceutical innovation services, expertise and market access. This agreement marks a significant milestone for Laxxon in terms of our own market strategy and development efforts." said Helmut Kerschbaumer, Laxxon's CEO. "We are looking forward to collaborating with Hovione to promote innovation through 3D screen printing." "We find the Laxxon Medical 3D printing technology to be very innovative and enabling. It not only allows for the customization and production of drug products with complex shapes and structures as well as unique API release characteristics but it also has the potential to reduce the time and cost of drug development" says Dr. Jean-Luc Herbeaux, Hovione´s CEO. He adds "Hovione has a track record of turning emerging pharmaceutical production technologies into reliable and scalable offerings at both developmental and commercial scales. We are excited at the prospect of supporting Laxxon in industrializing its 3D printing technology and make it accessible to a greater number of pharmaceutical and medical device companies." With this partnership the platform will be available from early development phases to routine commercial manufacturing. About Hovione Hovione is an international company with over 60 years of experience in pharmaceutical development and manufacturing operations. As a Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) Hovione has a fully integrated offering of services for drug substance, drug product intermediate and drug product. The company has four FDA inspected sites in the USA, Portugal, Ireland and China and development laboratories in Lisbon, Portugal and New Jersey, USA. Hovione provides pharmaceutical customers services for the development and compliant manufacture of innovative drugs, including highly potent compounds, and customized product solutions across the entire drug life cycle. In the inhalation area, Hovione offers a complete range of services, from API, formulation development and devices. Hovione´s culture is based on innovation, quality and delivery. Hovione was the first Chemical/ Pharmaceutical Company to become a Certified B Corp, is a member of Rx-360, EFCG and participates actively in industry quality improvement initiatives to lead new global industry standards.

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PHARMACY MARKET

REALM IDx Launches REALM Pharma Services to Improve Drug Development and Research

Businesswire | June 02, 2023

REALM IDx announced the launch of REALM Pharma Services, an end-to-end discovery, translational research, and clinical trial service for biotechnology and pharmaceutical partners. Through a strategic integration, REALM Pharma Services brings together the research arms of subsidiaries, Ambry Genetics and Invicro, to offer cutting-edge genomics, traditional and molecular pathology, and advanced imaging and spatial biology. Combined with machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) from REALM’s informatics organization, the company believes this end-to-end service can help reveal new insights and develop multi-dimensional models for drug discovery and validation. “We are excited to offer a comprehensive multiomic and multimodal program that has been tailored to support the needs of our biopharma partners,” said Aaron Elliott, PhD, CEO of REALM IDx. “We believe the integrated approach offered through REALM Pharma Services is a transformative shift in research and will bring new, data-driven insights to precision medicine.” Use of advanced omics, including single-cell omics, is increasingly being incorporated by biopharma into discovery and research efforts, particularly in the field of cancer. This approach can support improved understanding of biological complexity in immuno-oncology and a system-wide path to drug efficacy. However, a significant challenge has been the lack of a consolidated infrastructure to not only support analytical testing and data collection, but also computational analysis of unique data sets to find novel associations for translational insights. “In supporting our biopharma partners, we see ourselves as a powerful connecting force,” said Jonathan Usuaka, PhD, Chief Strategy and Informatics Officer for REALM IDx. “Along with world-class genomics, pathology, spatial imaging and analysis services, we support real-world data and advanced analytics to inform drug development at every stage.” The company will introduce REALM Pharma Services while exhibiting at the upcoming American Society of Clinical Oncology annual conference in Chicago, June 3 – 5. While at the conference, the company will also share details of a new comprehensive genomic profiling test (CGP) for cancer developed in collaboration with its partners in Japan and set to launch this summer. Additional information about REALM Pharma Services may be found on REALM’s website. About REALM IDx REALM IDx, Inc. is a health care company pioneering in the field of Integrated Diagnostics (IDx), an advanced field of clinical science that brings together laboratory medicine, radiology, pathology and sophisticated artificial intelligence to derive actionable insights to predict, diagnose and treat disease. Powered by proprietary software platforms, industry-leading genomics technology from Ambry Genetics Corporation and radiology and pathology services from Invicro, LLC, the company is equipped to collect, analyze and report on multi-modal precision diagnostic data sets.

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