Pharma News

In a historic achievement, the cumulative COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the country has surpassed the 100-crore milestone. In a tweet, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi congratulated the countrymen and expressed gratitude to the country’s scientific community and health professionals for working towards achieving this stupendous feat.

The Central Government has revoked the export ban from Covid diagnostic kits, reagents by making amendment in the export policy of diagnostic kits.

The export restriction is lifted from VTM kits and reagents, RNA extraction kits, RT PCR kits, facon tube or cryovials, swabs sterile synthetic fibre etc. It also includes Silicon columns, Carrier RNA, Proteinase K, Magnetic Stand, Beads, Probes from COVID19 testing, primers for COVID testing, Taq polymerase enzyme, COVID19 rapid antigen testing kits.

Availability of injectable insulin formulation has been a major breakthrough in diabetes management. However, insulin needs to be kept in a refrigerator, which, otherwise after some hours becomes unfit for use due to fibrillation (some kind of ‘solidification’). Its prolonged storage even in normal refrigerator is also not good. Therefore, its thermal instability and fibrillation at non-refrigerated temperatures demands storage and maintenance of cold chain, making it expensive.

Dr. Reddys Laboratories Ltd announced the final approval of its Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) for Lenalidomide Capsules, in 2.5 mg and 20 mg strengths, and tentative approval for 5 mg, 10 mg, 15 mg, and 25 mg strengths, a therapeutic equivalent generic version of REVLIMID® (lenalidomide) Capsules, from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (USFDA). With this approval, Dr. Reddy’s is eligible for 180 days of generic drug exclusivity for Lenalidomide Capsules, 2.5 mg and 20 mg.

The Subject Expert Committee (SEC) of CDSCO has granted emergency use approval (EUA) to Covaxin for children in the 2-18 years age group. Covaxin is developed by Hyderabad based Bharat Biotech.

Caovaxin had completed Phase-2 and Phase-3 trials of Covaxin on children below 18 years of age in September and submitted the trial data to the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) at the start of this month.

OSE Immunotherapeutics SA announced that it has received notice of allowance from the European Patent Office for a patent application related to Tedopi®, a neoepitope therapeutic vaccine, protecting a method for manufacturing a ready-to-use peptide emulsion for its use in the treatment of cancers in HLA-A2 positive patients. This patent will provide a protection until 2038.

Rice chemist Julian West and graduate student Yen-Chu Lu found that an Earth-abundant salt of manganese further simplifies the process of synthesizing fluoroketones, precursor molecules for drug design and manufacture.

The complex method required catalysts of expensive silver until the West lab figured out how to replace it with a cerium-based compound. That in turn led the researchers to eye manganese as a next-level catalyst.