FDA

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration held a joint meeting of the Anesthetic and Analgesic Drug Products Advisory Committee and the Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee on Avenue Therapeutics’ IV tramadol. 

Publicis Health announced the appointment of Larry Mickelberg as the global healthcare communications network’s first Chief Commercial Officer.

Greater Than One President Matthew Howes forecasts five healthcare marketing trends for 2022.

IQVIA

Life science companies gather and generate large amounts of data; however, this data often remains widely untouched, ungoverned, unstructured, and stored in disparate silos. In 2022 and beyond, life sciences organizations that uncover how to make use of their expansive data will be positioned to distinguish themselves competitively.

Roivant Sciences launched the new subsidiary Hemavant, which hit the ground running with a licensing agreement from Eisai for RVT-2001, a potential first-in-class small molecule SF3B1 modulator.

The immune response to COVID-19 helps protect against reinfection, but that protection is weaker against Omicron than it was against earlier variants of the coronavirus, according to new data. In other news, protection provided by booster shots of the mRNA vaccines from Moderna Inc. or Pfizer Inc. and partner BioNTech SE starts waning quickly, according to data published in Feb. 11th’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Pardes Biosciences Inc. said on February 14 the company expects to start a mid-to-late-stage trial of its experimental COVID-19 antiviral pill by mid-2022, following promising data from early human testing.

On the day the public and members of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee were going to get a look at Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine data for children under 5 years old, the companies pulled the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) submission.

The latest results from Genentech’s proposed eye disease treatments are demonstrating strong potential to help reduce treatment frequencies and deliver improved outcomes.  

Gilead Sciences Inc.’s antiviral drug remdesivir showed antiviral activity against Omicron, Delta and other variants of the coronavirus in laboratory studies, the company said on February 11.