Advanz Pharma is urging the European authorities to consider the “thousands” of primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) patients in the EU who will be left without treatment if the European Commission withdraws the conditional marketing authorization for its rare disease drug, Ocaliva (obeticholic acid), on the basis of a recommendation from the European Medicines Agency, according to Steffen Wagner, Advanz’s chief executive officer.
EU Ocaliva Withdrawal Recommendation Based On ‘Flawed’ Studies
Overreliance on “problematic” trials while overlooking the value of real-world evidence could affect the development of other rare disease treatments, according to Advanz’s CEO.

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Pharmaceutical companies are being encouraged to reach out to NICE in relation to its HTA Innovation Lab, which provides a sandbox environment in which the health technology assessment body can test new methods of evaluating “innovative and disruptive” therapies.
The weight management drug, Mysimba, continues to demonstrate a positive benefit-risk balance but the data available are not sufficient to fully determine the cardiovascular safety beyond 12 months. Meanwhile, Currax this month announced the publication of a peer-reviewed study of Mysimba that followed patients for over 4.7 years and found no evidence of excess cardiovascular risk.
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Pharmaceutical companies are being encouraged to reach out to NICE in relation to its HTA Innovation Lab, which provides a sandbox environment in which the health technology assessment body can test new methods of evaluating “innovative and disruptive” therapies.
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