Iraq

UK R&D firm Futura Medical strikes third commercial agreement for its drug-free erectile dysfunction treatment MED3000, this time with Switzerland’s Labatec Pharma, which will take the drug-free gel to the Middle East. 

Saudi Arabia is set to introduce a new pricing policy that will affect the rest of the region.

A new regular roundup of commercial stories appearing in Scrip's sister publication PharmAsia News, whose multilingual team of regional experts provides authoritative business intelligence focused on the Asian marketplace.

Executives from six US and EU biotechnology companies who spoke with Scrip Intelligence agreed that it's great to commercialize novel therapies without a partner and retain all financial rewards, but for any biotech firm that's looking for a deep-pocketed collaborator, now is a good time to be negotiating deals.

Makers of antibiotics to treat the nastiest, most drug-resistant bugs could gain an additional five years of data exclusivity protection and be granted fast-track status and six-month priority reviews by the US FDA if certain members of the US House of Representatives have their way.

The constitutionality of the US health care reform law went before appellate judges for the first time on 10 May in two separate cases, in which the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit heard oral arguments over more than two hours about lawsuits brought by Virginia's attorney general and the conservative Jerry Falwell-founded Liberty University.

President Barack Obama on 13 April said he plans to cut $340 billion over the next decade from Medicare and Medicaid, trimming $480 billion by 2023 and at least an additional $1 trillion in the subsequent decade, as part of his plan to slash $4 trillion from the federal deficit.

The US House of Representatives has cleared a controversial measure that, if signed into law, would ban "pay for delay" settlements between brand-name pharmaceutical companies and their generic competitors aimed at delaying the entry of generic medicines onto the market.

US House Democratic leaders have proposed $2 billion in supplemental funding to respond to the human swine influenza (H1N1) outbreak and the threat of a pandemic.

Almost five million Iraqi children were vaccinated against polio in the country's national immunisation drive, the Iraq Ministry of Health (MoH) has announced.