Industry news

24 March 2015

Clearside's novel eye drug delivery tech shows promise in latest clinical trial

Varun Saxena / Fierce Drug Delivery

Eyecare company Clearside Biomedical announced that patients treated with its injectable eye disease candidate demonstrated improved vision, as it tries to become the first to commercialize suprachoroidal delivery.

FDA under pressure to establish staff social media policy

Nick Paul Taylor / Fierce Biotech IT

Advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has found a new reason to grumble about how the FDA handles social media. Having faced years of criticism for its failure to publish guidelines on how the industry can use social media, the FDA is now being chastised over its lack of a policy for its staff.

India plans pharma manufacturing clusters to ease costs

EJ Lane / Feirce Biotech

India's health ministry said the government plans to spend $27.3 million to establish 10 clusters around the country for drugmakers to share common production facilities and reduce their costs by 25%.

Study: U.S. healthcare reform has led to a diabetes diagnosis surge in states with Medicaid expansion

Stacy Lawrence / Fierce Medical Devices

The enactment of the Affordable Care Act with its expansion of Medicaid benefits has led to an uptick in diabetes diagnoses by almost one-quarter, according to a study of deidentified test results from Quest Diagnostics ($DGX). That's in states that opted to expand Medicaid under the new law during the first 6 months of 2014 as compared to the first 6 months of 2013.

Biotech spared in U.K. rejig of VC trusts

Nick Paul Taylor / Fierce Biotech

The United Kingdom is to change the laws governing startup investment vehicles known as Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) but has opted against some of the dramatic alterations previously mooted. VCTs will still face new restrictions on the companies to which they can provide private equity cash, though.

23 March 2015

Neothetics Initiates Study to Evaluate Safety of Retreatment With LIPO-202 for Body Contouring

Neothetics, Inc.  (Nasdaq:NEOT), a clinical-stage specialty pharmaceutical company developing therapeutics for the aesthetic market, today announced it has initiated an open-label study to evaluate the safety of multiple courses of treatment of LIPO-202 (salmeterol xinafoate for injection) for the reduction of central abdominal bulging. 

Cancer immunotherapy is racking up more successes

Anette Breindl / BioWorld

Immunotherapy can deliver remissions that last long enough to make the most hardened oncologist consider the possibility that their patient might be cured. But only a minority of patients responds to immunotherapy at all.

China guidelines on stem cell research, treatments possible by summer

EJ Lane / FeircePharmaAsia

China could have guidelines governing stem cell and similar research and treatments by midsummer, the China FDA said in a meeting with local experts in the field.

Doors to Stay Open

GenomeWeb

Under pressure from the scientific community, the Australian government has funded research facilities there that were facing closure, Nature News reports.

EMA celebrates 20 years, looks to complex future

Nuala Moran / BioWorld

he best way to celebrate is to start preparing the European Medicines Agency [EMA] for the future." This was the call to arms from Guido Rasi, principal adviser in charge of strategy at the EMA, opening the agency's 20th anniversary celebration conference here on Wednesday.