Study Finds Good Adherence, Low ADE Rates With Oral DMTs
The multiple sclerosis (MS) therapeutic class boasts more than 20 disease modifying therapies (DMTs) that have various routes of administration. A recent study of oral therapies to treat relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS...
Integrated Medical, Pharmacy Claims Give Full View of AI Class
Some companies that analyze specialty drug spend do so with a focus solely on the pharmacy benefit. This approach, however, may fail to take into account a significant amount of medical benefit spending within certa...
New FDA Specialty Approvals
✦ April 6: The FDA approved a new dosing regimen for Eli Lilly and Co.’s Erbitux (cetuximab) of 500 mg/m2 as a 120-minute infusion every two weeks as a single agent or in combination with chemotherapy for people...
News Briefs
The FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee voted to keep most indications for a handful of immune checkpoint inhibitors that target programmed death-1/programmed death ligand-1 (PD-1/PD-L1) and received accelera...
Evaluation of Certain Cancer Drugs Illustrates Risk/Reward Balance
The FDA is conducting an industrywide evaluation of drugs with indications given accelerated approval in an effort to determine whether confirmatory clinical trials verified the therapies’ clinical benefits. Manuf...
Collaboration Is Needed on COVID Vaccine Dosing, Specialty Drugs
Many people taking specialty medications, such as people with cancer, are immunocompromised, and specialty drugs themselves can cause drug-induced immunosuppression. As COVID-19 vaccines roll out, it may be unclear ...
Oncologists Say They Expect To Prescribe Fotivda for RCC
The renal cell carcinoma (RCC) therapeutic class boasts multiple agents, but a recent entrant is offering a new tool for certain patients. A Zitter Insights survey shows that the majority of oncologist respondents a...
DMT Adherence While Pregnant Is Tied to Lower Medical Costs
Women diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) and being treated with disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) who become pregnant often discontinue those agents, as none are approved for use during pregnancy. But a recent ...
News Briefs
✦ Spending on specialty medications accounted for more than half of total drug spend for the first time last year. That’s according to the Evernorth 2020 Drug Trend Report, released in March, which noted that le...
New FDA Specialty Approvals
March 3: The FDA expanded the label for Pfizer Inc.’s Lorbrena (lorlatinib) to include the first-line treatment of people with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC...