Look back at Pharma news to Nov 3

By Barbara Obstoj-Cardwell. Editor

Swiss pharma giant Novartis’ $3.9 billion acquisition of France’s Advance Accelerator Applications hit the headlines last week in the M&A space, as did Neos Therapeutics’ rejection of a renewed unsolicited bid from PDL Biopharma. On the regulatory front, AstraZeneca won US Food and Drug Administration approval for its leukemia treatment Calquence, an FDA advisory panel backed approval of two new opioid use disorder drug candidates – Indivior’s RBP-6000 and Braeburn’s CAM2038, and Breakthrough designation for GlaxoSmithKline and Seattle Genetics’ myeloma candidate GSK2857916. There was also positive clinical trial news from Alnylam on patisiran and Ionis on inotersen.

Novartis bets big on Lutathera approval