Manufacturing and Production

The Anglo-Swedish pharma firm AstraZeneca has suspended investment into the United Kingdom, due to the uncertainty surrounding Brexit.

The firm’s non-executive chairman, Leif Johansson, shed light on the company’s decision, in an interview with French newspaper Le Monde.

“If a transition deal does not make clear what will happen in the future, we will maintain our decision not to invest,” the Swedish businessman said to Le Monde.

Politics played a big role in pharma this week after Trump introduced legislation aimed at reducing the price of drugs. The effectiveness of trust-busting biosimilar bill in bring the medicines to market may be an interesting development over the coming year. Meanwhile the UK government came into question after researchers were denied visas.

The Liverpool-based vaccine-maker Sequiris is investing £40 million into the expansion of its operations in the Speke area of Liverpool.

The multi-million pound investment is set to create 100 new jobs while allowing vaccines to be created more quickly in preparation for outbreaks of the flu. While vaccines are currently shipped to Italy for packaging, the expansion will now allow the process of packing the vaccines into syringes and capsules to be done in the UK.

The Redwood City, California-based late stage biopharmaceutical company Menlo Therapeutics have announced that experimental drug serlopitant has failed to meet its primary endpoint in patients with refractory chronic cough in Phase II trials.

The drug also failed to hit primary and secondary efficacy goals in a Phase II trial studying its use in treating pruritis in adults and adolescents with a history of atopic dermatitis earlier this year.

Janssen’s biologic therapy Stelara (ustekinumab) has shown new efficacy in the treatment of moderate to severe ulcerative colitis in two dosage groups, with both reporting “statistically significant improvements” as measured on the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire (IBDQ).

The drug has already secured approval in the US for a range of conditions including active psoriatic arthritis, moderately to severely active Crohn’s disease, and moderate to severe plaque psoriasis.

Current NICE guidance concerning the severity of the effects of antidepressant withdrawal is misleading doctors according to research published in the journal Addictive Behaviours.

Celgene has unveiled new Phase 3 data for Otezla (apremilast), its inhibitor of phosphodiesterase 4 (PDE4) specific for cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP), in the treatment of moderate to severe scalp psoriasis, with users showing a “highly statistically significant” increase in Scalp Physician’s Global Assessment (ScPGA) response, achieving its primary endpoint.

Specifically, patients taking 30mg twice daily reported a ScPGA response of 0 or 1, representing clear or almost clear respectively, with at least a two-point reduction from baseline after 16 weeks, compared to placebo.