Rise and shine, another busy day is on the way. We can tell if only by the flurry of dispatches emanating from the JPM affair in San Francisco, where a long-awaited pharmaceutical industry confab is under way. Such is life in the fast lane. As for us, we are engaged in our usual routine of foraging for interesting items, which you will find below. So time to get cracking. We hope your day is productive and meaningful. And please do reach out if you hear something saucy or head spinning. We always appreciate telegrams and postcards. …
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is pressing pause on drug-company testing of experimental medicines more often, a side effect of the industry’s move into promising but less-proven technologies, The Wall Street Journal reports. As biotechs pursue more cutting-edge cell and gene therapies, the FDA has been issuing more suspensions than it had, according to a review of FDA data on clinical holds. The agency halted clinical trials for experimental drugs an average of 664 times each year from 2017 to 2021, up from 557 each of the previous five years. Through mid-December last year, the FDA had placed 747 of the holds.
