Despite the life sciences industry’s call for continued alignment of medicines regulation with the EU from next year and for some sort of co-operation with the European Medicines Agency, it seems the UK government is prepared to make only small concessions.

The UK’s decision to pull out of Europe’s Unified Patent Court system throws the future of the whole project into doubt.

As fears grow that a full-blown COVID-19 pandemic may be on the way, a European public-private consortium is to make available a total of €45m (US$49m) in funding for projects aimed at accelerating the development of diagnostics and therapeutics to help tackle the current outbreak and any future coronavirus threats. 

Europe’s Innovative Medicines Initiative is calling for R&D projects aimed at tackling the spread of COVID-19, saying that collaborative ventures have the potential to accelerate the development of therapeutics and diagnostics to tackle this and future coronavirus outbreaks.

Europe’s Innovative Medicines Initiative is to get €90m in funding for programs targeting the coronavirus outbreak.

The Belgian authorities are taking steps to reduce the consumption of benzodiazepine-containing medicines, and have also reiterated the risks associated with the increasing use of opioid medications.