Susanne Schaffert tells Scrip that policies of prioritizing coronavirus treatment to the detriment of cancer care was a worrying move that is negatively impacting survival and mortality.

Glenmark rolls out three-in-one inhaler therapy for COPD in India and hopes to address challenges faced by patients suffering from the severe form of the disease. Some early physician outlook appears mixed for the new combination in a segment where leading respiratory player Cipla has an established product.

Gilead’s voluntary licensing of remdesivir to five companies while temporarily charging no royalty and allowing them pricing latitude for 127 developing countries not only expands market access but tilts the pricing debate in Gilead’s favor. It also brings significant potential add-on manufacturing capacity.

"There's a lot of hope and hype still in the microbiome sphere," Ferring's president Per Falk tells Scrip, but the rewards could be considerable for companies that can deliver well-documented safety and efficacy data and do not take try to take shortcuts.

The US giant's chief patient officer and former head of the CDC, is proud of the "incredible collaboration" going on across the biopharmaceutical industry to tackle coronavirus but says "we have to be honest that we really don't understand this disease."

After three weeks of the first-quarter 2020 earnings season, the coronavirus pandemic has left pure-play pharmaceutical companies in a much better position than many other sectors. One of the reasons behind this has been channel stocking. As some companies have learnt in the past, this can be a double-edged sword.

Vas Narasimhan hopes that donations and the "unprecedented collaborations" between drugmakers trying to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic is leading to a shift in the perception of the value of the sector to society.

The Swiss major says operations have not faced significant disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic but recruitment of patients for new trials, including a high-profile trial of inclisiran, have been impacted.

With a PDUFA date fast approaching, AstraZeneca has presented more data from the PROfound study, this time showing that Lynparza improved OS compared to hormonal therapies in men with advanced castration-resistant prostate cancer with BRCA1/2 or ATM mutations.