pharmaceuticals

The phrase “Kodak moment” could soon have a new meaning. Kodak, a 132-year-old camera company, is launching a new pharmaceuticals arm with help from Uncle Sam, officials announced Tuesday. The Trump administration awarded the onetime photography titan $765 million under the Defense Production Act to make ingredients for a wide range of drugs in an …

Gilead Sciences announced plans Monday to start testing an inhaled version of its experimental coronavirus drug to determine whether it could treat the deadly disease sooner. The pharma giant will begin screening patients this week for early-stage trials of the breathable form of remdesivir, which has been shown to help COVID-19 patients recover faster, Gilead …

AstraZeneca has approached Gilead Sciences about a massive merger that would combine two companies leading the pharmaceutical industry’s battle against the coronavirus, a report says. The British drugmaker reached out to California-based Gilead last month about whether it would be interested in merging, Bloomberg News reported Sunday. But there are no formal talks and Gilead …

British drugmaker AstraZeneca has doubled manufacturing capacity for its potential coronavirus vaccine to 2 billion doses in a handful of deals involving Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates that guarantee early supply to lower-income countries. The deals with epidemic response group CEPI and vaccine alliance GAVI are backed by the World Health Organization and aim to quell …

Gilead Sciences is developing easier-to-administer versions of its antiviral treatment remdesivir for COVID-19 that could be used outside of hospitals, including ones that can be inhaled, after trials showed moderate effectiveness for the drug given by infusion. Remdesivir is the only drug so far that has been shown to help patients with COVID-19, but Gilead …

Shares of Pfizer fell nearly 7 percent on Monday after an independent data monitoring committee determined the drugmaker’s breast cancer treatment was unlikely to meet the main goal of a late-stage study. The treatment, Ibrance, was being tested along with the standard of care for early breast cancer in men and women, against standard of …

The CEO of pharmaceutical giant Merck on Monday said he watched the videotape of George Floyd being killed by a white officer with the knowledge that it “could be me.” “What the African American community sees in that videotape is that this African American man, who could be me or any other African American man, …

US health regulators are telling five drugmakers to recall their versions of a widely used diabetes medication after laboratory tests found elevated levels of a contaminant linked to cancer. The Food and Drug Administration said late Thursday that several batches of the drug metformin tested positive for unsafe levels of N-Nitrosodimethylamine, a possible cancer-causing chemical …

The chief executive of AstraZeneca, which is developing a leading coronavirus vaccine with Oxford University, said it is too early to deliberately expose trial participants to the pathogen, but it may become an option if ongoing tests hit a snag. The British drugmaker last week started phase 2 and 3 trials of the vaccine, looking …

US stocks rallied Wednesday as the apparent success of an experimental coronavirus treatment boosted Wall Street’s hopes for an end to the crisis. The Dow Jones industrial average surged as much as 547.64 points, or 2.2 percent, to 24,649.19, after Gilead Sciences said it was aware of “promising data” from a government-backed study of remdesivir, …