Takeda offered on April 24, 2018 a revised conditional acquisition proposal to acquire Shire worth approximately $64 billion following several rejected acquisition proposals from Takeda during March and April 2018. Shire says it is willing to recommend the revised proposal to its shareholders. Read More

Mylan has announced layoffs affecting about 15% of its workforce at its site in Morgantown, West Virginia, primarily in operations, in what the company says is a plan to right-size. Following the cuts, the company will have approximately 3,000 employees in West Virginia. Read More

Fresenius, a specialty and generic pharmaceuticals company, has decided to terminate the company’s $4.3-billion merger agreement with Akorn, a specialty generic pharmaceutical company, based on several factors, including what it says are material breaches of FDA data-integrity requirements. Akorn is disputing Fresenius’ assertion and Fresenius' move to end the merger agreement. Read More

Biogen and Ionis Pharmaceuticals have expanded their collaboration through a new 10-year pact to develop antisense drug candidates for a range of neurological diseases in a $1-billion deal. Read More

The FDA has issued a Complete Response Letter to Pfizer in response to a biologics license application for the company’s proposed biosimilar to Roche’s Herceptin (trastuzumab), a top-selling drug for Roche for treating HER2-positive breast and gastric cancers. Read More

During testimony before the US Senate Committee on Appropriations regarding President Trump’s fiscal year 2019 budget request, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb highlighted two of the agency's key priorities, addressing drug pricing by increasing generic-drug competition and real-time product performance data in post-market surveillance. Read More

Astellas Pharma has transferred certain research facilities from Agensys, an affiliate of Astellas, in Santa Monica, California to Kite Pharma, Gilead Sciences’ cell-therapy subsidiary. The transfer is part of Astellas’ wind-down process of the Agensys research operations as announced in July 2017. Read More

Thermo Fisher Scientific is investing $50 million in its St. Louis, Missouri site, which is one of its Centers of Excellence for Biological Commercial Manufacturing. The investment is part of a strategy to expand its network of biologic drug-substance capabilities for clinical and commercial supply. Read More

Zoetis, a Shanghai, China-based animal-health company spun off from Pfizer, has begun construction on a combined global manufacturing and supply and R&D center in Suzhou, China. Zoetis has also opened an interim R&D facility nearby to develop vaccines for China’s farmed fish industry. Read More

Sandoz, Novartis’ generics arm, has partnered with Pear Therapeutics, a prescription digital therapeutics company, to commercialize Pear Therapeutics’ two lead products, reSET and reSET-O, digital therapeutics for treating substance abuse. The products are designed to deliver treatments through mobile and desktop applications. Read More