Rx Drugs

Hospitals in pandemic hot spots have been stretched thin, but they would have been worse off had they not recently started their own generic drug maker, Civica Rx, which has averted shortages of drugs used to treat COVID-19 patients, a Civica spokesperson said.

Pharmaceutical companies anticipate sales returning to normal by the end of the year as life normalizes and people begin returning to doctors’ offices for nonessential procedures and wellness visits, several industry executives said during first quarter investor calls.

Health care technology company Aetion is calling for FDA to implement a cloud-based real-world evidence platform with robust data governance to allow for data queries, archiving, access and aggregation.

The price of a course remdesivir, the first drug to show modest improvements in severely ill COVID-19 patients, could be set between $10 and $4,500, according to the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review.

FDA on Friday (May 1) issued Emergency Use Authorization for Gilead’s remdesivir to treat lab-confirmed COVID-19 in hospitalized adults and children.

The generic drug lobby is floating a policy proposal to secure the pharmaceutical supply chain under which HHS would identify essential U.S. medicines and then proactively incentivize both individual companies and the entire industry to ramp up domestic manufacturing, including through streamlined FDA regulations, tax incentives, and long-term price and volume guaranteed contracts.

Generic drug prices decreased significantly in February, despite a recent trend upward after years of deflation, according to the drug-price-tracking nonprofit 46Brooklyn, though naproxen was a notable exception to that trend.

Key House lawmakers released a concept paper Monday (April 27) outlining FDA and clinical trial reforms they want included in the second iteration of the 21st Century Cures Act, though they say some of the proposals could be wrapped into the next rounds of COVID-19 relief legislation this year.

Two major pharmacy associations on Monday (April 27) released draft guidelines to help state boards of pharmacy ensure compounding pharmacies comply with FDA’s recent guidance that temporarily eases restrictions on pharmacy compounders and allows pharmacists to compound drugs for hospitals without first receiving a patient-specific prescription.