Top of the morning to you and a fine one it is. Blue skies, cool breezes and plenty of chirping birds are enveloping the comfy Pharmalot campus, which is cause to fire up the coffee kettle for yet another cup of stimulation. Our choice today is pecan pie — sweets for the sweet, you know. Meanwhile, we have assembled the latest menu of tidbits for you to peruse. We hope you have a wonderful day and please do keep in touch. Once again, we will note that our settings have changed to accept postcards and telegrams…
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill by 306 to 81 votes to make drug companies stop doing business with some Chinese biotechs within eight years if they want to remain in good standing with the federal government, STAT reports. The BIOSECURE Act would prohibit the U.S. government from contracting with, or providing grants to, companies that do business with a “biotechnology company of concern.” It specifically names five Chinese companies: BGI Genomics, MGI Tech, Complete Genomics, WuXi AppTec, and Wuxi Biologics. The bill would likely need to hitch a ride with a larger legislative vehicle, such as the annual defense bill or government funding legislation, during the lame duck session between the elections and when newly elected officials take office.
Amid calls to expand access to medicines in low- and middle-income countries, a new analysis finds that most of the world’s 20 largest pharmaceutical companies have taken steps to reach patients, but many efforts are yielding decidedly mixed results, STAT tells us. On the one hand, 19 companies have established methods for providing treatments to these countries — but only nine of the drugmakers created comprehensive plans. Moreover, there is no consensus on how to calculate the number of patients being reached, so the approach taken varies widely among products and countries. In addition, most of the companies rely on sales volume to measure access goals, but this can be an imperfect benchmark because it does not ensure that medicines actually reached patients.
