SUMMARY: (Financial Times) BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna will dominate the Covid-19 vaccine market next year, generating a massive $93.2bn in combined sales and legislation allowing the government to negotiate drug prices for Medicare is all but dead.
Category Archive: Bad Pharma
SUMMARY: (Times) The financial windfall at Moderna, the biotech company behind one of the three federally cleared Covid-19 vaccines, has propelled three new names onto Forbes magazine’s list of the 400 wealthiest people in the United States. However, it’s the NIH’s vaccine. It is not merely Moderna’s vaccine. Federal scientists helped invent it, and taxpayers are funding its development.
SUMMARY: Via Axios – The antiviral pill that showed promising results against severe COVID-19 was initially developed at Emory University with $35 million of taxpayer grants. And while it costs $17.74 to produce, according to a report issued last week by drug pricing experts at the Harvard School of Public Health and King’s College Hospital in London. Merck charges the U.S. government $712 for the same amount of medicine or 40 times the price.
SUMMARY: If I were to ask you, “what type of company is Biogen?” what would be your response? I tried asking that of several colleagues in the industry, and they couldn’t come up with an answer. Biogen has lost its way and is in desperate need of a corporate rebranding.
SUMMARY: Pfizer will earn over 26 billion dollars from their COVID vaccine, while Moderna and J&J also look to their vaccines for more profit dollars. The suggestion by Pfizer’s CEO that drug pricing negotiations with the government would slow innovation is PR doubletalk.
SUMMARY:
- The Committee on Oversight and Reform and the Committee on Energy and Commerce is investigating the approval process for Biogen’s new Alzheimer’s drug.
- Janet Woodcock acknowledged on Wednesday her agency may have misstepped in the handling of its polarizing approval of a new Alzheimer’s drug.
- Biogen undertook a secret campaign, termed Project Onyx, to persuade FDA to approve Aduhelm.
- Biogen’s reputation may be damaged beyond repair.
SUMMARY:
- The debate around Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug continues to rage.
- The clinical evidence supporting the approval of the drug is at best “weak.”
- How could the FDA approve a drug with such poor clinical data?
- How can Biogen’s employees continue to work for a company that is raping taxpayers for a drug that doesn’t work?
SKIMMERS SUMMARY:
- Jefferies analysts found doctors have shown strong interest in prescribing Aduhelm for about 35% of early-stage Alzheimer’s patients with mild cognitive impairment after surveying 50 U.S. neurologists or psychiatrists currently treating about 12,000 Alzheimer’s patients. Source: Fierce Pharma
- If that enthusiasm pans out in the long run, it could mean at least 300,000 patients taking the drug, or $10 billion to $15 billion in peak Aduhelm from U.S. sales alone, which is above consensus estimates of around $7 billion to $8 billion, the team said.
- One agency FDA adviser, resigning from his committee post in protest, called it “probably the worst drug approval decision in recent U.S. history.” Source: STAT News
- Our healthcare system can’t continue to support drugs that don’t have good clinical outcomes behind them.