Senate to vote Saturday on healthcare deal
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Today's Rundown

Featured Story

Pfizer, riding high on COVID windfall, eyes $5B play for Global Blood Therapeutics: WSJ

Riding high on its COVID-19 windfall, Pfizer has been busy scouring the biopharma landscape for new assets to bring into the fold. Now, the drugmaker appears to have set its sights on Global Blood Therapeutics and its marketed sickle cell disease drug Oxbryta.

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Top Stories

Amgen takes BiTEs out of pipeline, dropping BCMA, PSMA assets in light of data and competition

Amgen is bowing out of the congested BCMA race. With a who’s who of drug developers going after the multiple myeloma target, the big biotech has decided to stop work on its bispecific contender as part of a cull that also saw it pick between its two PSMA prospects.

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Teladoc rival Amwell scores CVS tie-up to launch retailer's virtual primary care service

Telehealth company Amwell is working with CVS Health to roll out the retail drugstore giant's new virtual primary care service.

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Troubled testmaker Talis Biomedical drops COVID plans, lays off 35% of remaining staff

The point-of-care testmaker Talis Biomedical is undergoing a second wave of layoffs this year after struggling to get its COVID-19 diagnostic off the ground. It will make another 35% reduction in its headcount and is walking away from COVID testing altogether, pivoting instead to screeners for sexually transmitted diseases.

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Amgen sketches expansion plan for Lumakras as key launch lags thanks to diagnosis bottleneck

In the lead up to Amgen's second-quarter earnings reveal, Wall Street analysts warned that the company's targeted lung cancer drug Lumakras might disappoint in the U.S. It turns out they were right.

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Eli Lilly hit by migraine drug launch slowdown and a Reyvow no-show, but rivals Biohaven, AbbVie post sales boost

As the dust settles around pharma’s second-quarter financial readouts, we check in on how the new and increasingly crowded migraine market is looking.

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‘A negative trial, not a failed trial’: Neurocrine axes in-licensed tremor program on phase 2 data

Two years after licensing the asset for $45 million upfront, Neurocrine Biosciences has pulled the plug on the development of NBI-827104 in essential tremor after the failure of a phase 2a clinical trial to make the case for further investment.

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Senate to vote Saturday on major healthcare deal that includes drug price reforms

The Senate is expected to hold a vote this weekend on the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes major reforms to drug prices and extends ACA subsides by three years.

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FDA turns away Acadia's Nuplazid—again—this time in Alzheimer’s disease psychosis

A little over a year ago, Acadia's Nuplazid received an FDA complete response letter in the broad indication of dementia-related psychosis. Now, the agency rejected the med in a more specific use based on concerns over its data package.

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FDA clears Viz.ai’s algorithm to spot internal bleeds in brain scans

Viz SDH, which aims to detect subdural hematomas in CT images of the brain, is lucky No. 7 on Viz.ai's list of FDA-cleared imaging analysis algorithms.

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Merck plans to count coughs and months until gefapixant is back in FDA hands

Merck & Co. is going to be counting coughs and months until the P2X3 receptor antagonist medicine gefapixant is back before regulators.

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Pain drug stigma stops patients from getting meds but opioid side effects, fatalities muddy waters

Chronic pain can be an unbearable burden for many patients. And while there are pain medications out there to help, stigma and concerns over addiction and abuse are getting in the way of patient access. The findings are based on a survey of just under 2,400 people conducted by the U.S. Pain Foundation, which is backed by pain drug pharma companies like Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson and Salix.

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Sutter Health's rising expenses and rough investments yield a $457M net loss for Q2 2022

The new numbers cement what was already looking to be a tricky year for the California nonprofit system, which during the previous quarter had reported a $184 million net loss.

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