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Tag: AstraZeneca

  • AstraZeneca agrees to lower drug prices for Medicaid under Trump administration deal

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    By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press

    WASHINGTON (AP) — AstraZeneca on Friday became the second major pharmaceutical manufacturer to announce it had agreed to lower the cost of prescription drugs for Medicaid under a deal struck with the Trump administration that avoided its threats of steep tariffs.

    President Donald Trump made the announcement in the Oval Office with AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot, who said that during tough negotiations to reach a deal, Trump and his team of officials had “really kept me up at night.”

    Under the agreement, AstraZeneca will charge most-favored-nation pricing to Medicaid, while guaranteeing such pricing on newly launched drugs, Trump said. That involves matching the lowest price offered in other developed nations.

    “For many years, Americans have paid the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, by far,” Trump said, adding that the new deal may cut prices to “the lowest price anywhere in the world. That’s what we get.”

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  • There may soon be a new approach to treat hard-to-control high blood pressure

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    Doctors may soon have a new way to treat high blood pressure, even among people for whom medicines haven’t worked well in the past.Baxdrostat, an experimental medicine made by AstraZeneca, showed promise in treating people with uncontrolled or resistant high blood pressure in a recent trial. If the medicine gets approved by regulatory authorities, it will be one of the first new approaches to treating high blood pressure in decades, researchers say.Scientists presented the trial results Saturday at the European Society of Cardiology Congress 2025 in Madrid and simultaneously published them in the New England Journal of Medicine.For the study, researchers enrolled 800 adults who still had high blood pressure after taking two or more medications for at least four weeks. To qualify for the study, patients’ systolic blood pressure had to be between 140 and 170.Blood pressure is measured in millimeters of mercury, which is abbreviated as mm Hg. The measurement has an upper number, or systolic reading, and a lower number, a diastolic reading. Systolic pressure measures the force of blood as it pumps out of the heart into the arteries; diastolic is the pressure created as the heart rests between beats.Normal blood pressure is less than 120/80 mm Hg, and elevated blood pressure is considered to be from 120 to 129/80 mm Hg. At 130/80 mmHg or higher, according to new U.S. guidelines, a person’s medical provider will want them to take a blood pressure medication if lifestyle changes — including eating healthier, reducing salt in the diet and exercising more — don’t work first.The researchers on the new trial placed the participants into three groups. One received 1 milligram of baxdrostat, another got 2 mg, and another got a placebo, which does nothing. Participants took their dose in addition to medicines they were already taking.At 12 weeks, about 4 in 10 patients taking baxdrostat reached healthy blood pressure levels, compared with less than 2 in 10 who got a placebo.Specifically, participants who got 1 or 2 mg of baxdrostat daily saw their systolic blood pressure – the upper number in the reading – fall around 9 to 10 mm Hg more than those taking a placebo. This reduction, studies show, is large enough to cut cardiovascular risk.When blood pressure is high, the force of the blood pushes against the walls of their blood vessels, making the heart less efficient: Both the vessels and the heart must work harder, and it’s more difficult to get blood to essential organs and cells. Without treatment, high blood pressure will eventually damage the arteries, raising the risk of conditions like a heart attack, stroke, coronary disease, vascular dementia and cognitive problems.Heart disease is the No. 1 killer in the world. Lowering blood pressure is the most modifiable way to avoid such a death.Nearly half of all adults in the U.S. have higher than normal blood pressure, and 1 in 10 people have what doctors call resistant hypertension: Despite being on three or more medications, they are not meeting the goal for blood pressure control.When a patient has high blood pressure, doctors may need to try a variety of medications to see what works best.Adding baxdrostat to the list of options could be a big help for patients, according to Dr. Stacey E. Rosen, volunteer president of the American Heart Association, who was not involved with the new research.“What’s interesting about this medication is that they can really be a wonderful partner, so to speak, with some of the more classically recommended anti-hypertensive medications,” said Rosen, who is also a senior vice president of women’s health and executive director of the Katz Institute for Women’s Health of Northwell Health in New York City.Medication options now on the market control blood pressure in a variety of ways. Some, such as vasodilators, relax and widen arteries and veins to allow blood to get through easier and increase flow. Diuretics primarily work by removing excess fluid and salt from the body by increasing urine production. Centrally acting alpha agonists help prevent the nervous system from responding to stress. ACE inhibitors keep the body from producing angiotensin II, a hormone that makes blood vessels constrict. ARBs, or angiotensin II receptor blockers, help reduce the production of aldosterone, a hormone that promotes salt and water retention. Calcium channel blockers can keep calcium away from the cells of the heart and arteries so they don’t have to work as hard.Each can have different side effects, including dizziness, rapid or slower heart rate, exhaustion, upset stomach and swelling in the legs.Baxdrostat’s side effects, the study showed, were mild overall. The most common problem was abnormalities in potassium and sodium levels, but this was rare.Baxdrostat takes a new approach to managing high blood pressure. It focuses on blocking aldosterone, a hormone created by the adrenal glands that helps kidneys regulate salt and maintain the body’s water balance. Some people produce too much aldosterone, leading their body to retain too much water and salt, pushing up blood pressure.“We’ve also known for a while now that most of us eat too much salt and in doing that, it raises blood pressure. But we’re also increasingly recognizing that aldosterone may have a direct impact on causing damage to the blood vessels, to the heart, to the kidneys,” said Dr. Jenifer Brown, one of the lead investigators and co-author of the published study.Brown said she often sees cardiology patients at Brigham and Women’s who may have had a heart event, so she needs to be aggressive in getting their blood pressure under control to prevent another. Some patients may have trouble tolerating other blood pressure medications. For others, the standard medicines just don’t work well. Baxdrostat could be a good complement, she said.“We really have had the same tools as clinicians for many years,” Brown said. “I would be excited to have an option like this.”In an editorial accompanying the publication, Dr. Tomasz Guzik, a cardiovascular scientist at the University of Edinburgh, and Dr. Maciej Tomaszewski, a cardiovascular expert at the University of Manchester, write that next steps should be to figure out which patients would best respond to this new medicine and provide longer-term data. If the medication works long-term, they wrote, it could become a “central piller of therapy for difficult-to-control hypertension.”AstraZeneca said it plans to submit its data to regulatory agencies before the end of 2025.

    Doctors may soon have a new way to treat high blood pressure, even among people for whom medicines haven’t worked well in the past.

    Baxdrostat, an experimental medicine made by AstraZeneca, showed promise in treating people with uncontrolled or resistant high blood pressure in a recent trial. If the medicine gets approved by regulatory authorities, it will be one of the first new approaches to treating high blood pressure in decades, researchers say.

    Scientists presented the trial results Saturday at the European Society of Cardiology Congress 2025 in Madrid and simultaneously published them in the New England Journal of Medicine.

    For the study, researchers enrolled 800 adults who still had high blood pressure after taking two or more medications for at least four weeks. To qualify for the study, patients’ systolic blood pressure had to be between 140 and 170.

    Blood pressure is measured in millimeters of mercury, which is abbreviated as mm Hg. The measurement has an upper number, or systolic reading, and a lower number, a diastolic reading. Systolic pressure measures the force of blood as it pumps out of the heart into the arteries; diastolic is the pressure created as the heart rests between beats.

    Normal blood pressure is less than 120/80 mm Hg, and elevated blood pressure is considered to be from 120 to 129/80 mm Hg. At 130/80 mmHg or higher, according to new U.S. guidelines, a person’s medical provider will want them to take a blood pressure medication if lifestyle changes — including eating healthier, reducing salt in the diet and exercising more — don’t work first.

    The researchers on the new trial placed the participants into three groups. One received 1 milligram of baxdrostat, another got 2 mg, and another got a placebo, which does nothing. Participants took their dose in addition to medicines they were already taking.

    At 12 weeks, about 4 in 10 patients taking baxdrostat reached healthy blood pressure levels, compared with less than 2 in 10 who got a placebo.

    Specifically, participants who got 1 or 2 mg of baxdrostat daily saw their systolic blood pressure – the upper number in the reading – fall around 9 to 10 mm Hg more than those taking a placebo. This reduction, studies show, is large enough to cut cardiovascular risk.

    When blood pressure is high, the force of the blood pushes against the walls of their blood vessels, making the heart less efficient: Both the vessels and the heart must work harder, and it’s more difficult to get blood to essential organs and cells. Without treatment, high blood pressure will eventually damage the arteries, raising the risk of conditions like a heart attack, stroke, coronary disease, vascular dementia and cognitive problems.

    Heart disease is the No. 1 killer in the world. Lowering blood pressure is the most modifiable way to avoid such a death.

    Nearly half of all adults in the U.S. have higher than normal blood pressure, and 1 in 10 people have what doctors call resistant hypertension: Despite being on three or more medications, they are not meeting the goal for blood pressure control.

    When a patient has high blood pressure, doctors may need to try a variety of medications to see what works best.

    Adding baxdrostat to the list of options could be a big help for patients, according to Dr. Stacey E. Rosen, volunteer president of the American Heart Association, who was not involved with the new research.

    “What’s interesting about this medication is that they can really be a wonderful partner, so to speak, with some of the more classically recommended anti-hypertensive medications,” said Rosen, who is also a senior vice president of women’s health and executive director of the Katz Institute for Women’s Health of Northwell Health in New York City.

    Medication options now on the market control blood pressure in a variety of ways. Some, such as vasodilators, relax and widen arteries and veins to allow blood to get through easier and increase flow. Diuretics primarily work by removing excess fluid and salt from the body by increasing urine production. Centrally acting alpha agonists help prevent the nervous system from responding to stress. ACE inhibitors keep the body from producing angiotensin II, a hormone that makes blood vessels constrict. ARBs, or angiotensin II receptor blockers, help reduce the production of aldosterone, a hormone that promotes salt and water retention. Calcium channel blockers can keep calcium away from the cells of the heart and arteries so they don’t have to work as hard.

    Each can have different side effects, including dizziness, rapid or slower heart rate, exhaustion, upset stomach and swelling in the legs.

    Baxdrostat’s side effects, the study showed, were mild overall. The most common problem was abnormalities in potassium and sodium levels, but this was rare.

    Baxdrostat takes a new approach to managing high blood pressure. It focuses on blocking aldosterone, a hormone created by the adrenal glands that helps kidneys regulate salt and maintain the body’s water balance. Some people produce too much aldosterone, leading their body to retain too much water and salt, pushing up blood pressure.

    “We’ve also known for a while now that most of us eat too much salt and in doing that, it raises blood pressure. But we’re also increasingly recognizing that aldosterone may have a direct impact on causing damage to the blood vessels, to the heart, to the kidneys,” said Dr. Jenifer Brown, one of the lead investigators and co-author of the published study.

    Brown said she often sees cardiology patients at Brigham and Women’s who may have had a heart event, so she needs to be aggressive in getting their blood pressure under control to prevent another. Some patients may have trouble tolerating other blood pressure medications. For others, the standard medicines just don’t work well. Baxdrostat could be a good complement, she said.

    “We really have had the same tools as clinicians for many years,” Brown said. “I would be excited to have an option like this.”

    In an editorial accompanying the publication, Dr. Tomasz Guzik, a cardiovascular scientist at the University of Edinburgh, and Dr. Maciej Tomaszewski, a cardiovascular expert at the University of Manchester, write that next steps should be to figure out which patients would best respond to this new medicine and provide longer-term data. If the medication works long-term, they wrote, it could become a “central piller of therapy for difficult-to-control hypertension.”

    AstraZeneca said it plans to submit its data to regulatory agencies before the end of 2025.

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  • Misleading Claims on Well-Known Rare Risk of AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine

    Misleading Claims on Well-Known Rare Risk of AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine

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    SciCheck Digest

    A rare risk of dangerous blood clots associated with the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine was identified and reported in early 2021. This month, the company announced it was pulling the vaccine off the market globally, citing a decline in demand. Social media posts misleadingly linked the decision to the company having “admitted” the rare side effect “for the first time” in court documents and used it to impugn all vaccines.

    Full Story

    The association between the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and a rare and dangerous blood clotting condition combined with low blood platelets has been known for more than three years. The condition is known as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, or TTS, in general, and vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia, or VITT, when it implies an association to vaccines.

    The European Medicines Agency, which regulates vaccines in the European Union, first warned of the possible link between the vaccine and “very rare cases of blood clots associated with thrombocytopenia, i.e. low levels of blood platelets” on March 18, 2021. In a statement issued that same day, the pharmaceutical company acknowledged the finding and said it “recognises and will implement” EMA’s recommendations, including updating the product information to warn about the reported cases.

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  • Bristol Myers to Acquire RayzeBio in Deal Valued at $4.1 Billion

    Bristol Myers to Acquire RayzeBio in Deal Valued at $4.1 Billion

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    Bristol Myers Squibb will acquire radiopharmaceutical therapeutics company RayzeBio for $62.50 a share in cash.

    Continue reading this article with a Barron’s subscription.

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  • The real Covid jab scandal is finally emerging

    The real Covid jab scandal is finally emerging

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    I am not an anti-vaxxer but… On 29 April 2021, Lisa Shaw, a clever, sensible, creative, mischievous, award-winning presenter at BBC Radio Newcastle, had her first Covid vaccination. Like millions of us, Lisa was delighted and relieved to get her jab. Not only did the 44-year-old mother of one feel she was doing her bit to keep her community safe (Lisa had been astonished a few weeks earlier when a girlfriend had said she wasn’t getting jabbed), she was excited “to give her mam a hug”.

    A few days later, Lisa developed a headache and stabbing pains behind her eyes which wouldn’t go away. By May 16, she was taken by ambulance to University Hospital of North Durham. Tests revealed blood clots in Lisa’s brain and she was moved to a specialist neurology unit in Newcastle. By now, she had difficulty speaking. Scans showed she had suffered a haemorrhage in the brain and part of her skull was removed to try and relieve the pressure. Her husband Gareth Eve remained by his wife’s bedside, but Lisa told him to go home because she was worried about Zachary, their six-year-old. One final kiss. The last time Gareth heard her voice. Lisa Shaw died on May 21 from complications arising from the AstraZeneca Covid vaccination.

    The coroner said: “Ms Shaw was previously fit and well” but it was “clearly established” that her death was due to a very rare “vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT)”, a new condition which leads to swelling and bleeding of the brain.

    Strenuous efforts had been made to put the public’s mind at rest when the jab was approved. The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine was “a great British success story”, according to the then health secretary Matt Hancock; self-obsessed numpty that he is, Hancock was particularly chuffed the jab had been invented by someone who went to his Oxford college. “It is truly fantastic news – and a triumph for British science – that the @UniofOxford/@AstraZeneca vaccine has been approved for use,” tweeted a triumphant prime minister Boris Johnson.

    At a dark time, the AZ jab brought a blazing ray of hope with the added patriotic, Brexit bonus that the UK was able to steal a march on our European neighbours. After Lisa Shaw died, we were told that the clots are “considered extremely rare,” there had only been 417 reported cases and 72 deaths after 24.8 million first doses and 23.9 million second doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK. It also saved a great many lives. But expressing reservations about possible side-effects was seen as party-pooping. It meant you ran the risk of being labelled as that most reviled and irresponsible being, an “anti-vaxxer”.

    “I had lost my wife and my son had lost his mam, but for an awfully long time people like us weren’t able to tell our story because we were put in the box of crackpots and conspiracy theorists,” Gareth Eve told me yesterday. After Lisa died, Gareth says he had phone conversations with several leading broadcasters. “They would express sympathy, but then they were very nervous, they’d say they have to be very careful, you know, how they report the story without breaching broadcasting guidelines by implying there was any problem with the jab.”

    One beautiful vibrant woman, “loved by everyone whose lives she touched”, was gone. (“I wish it had been me instead of her,” Gareth says, “I do my best as a single dad with Zach, but I’m never going to be Lisa, she was so tactile and loving.”) The fact Lisa Shaw had died after receiving the AZ jab was nothing to worry about, though, in the grand scheme of things, was it?

    Well, yes, actually it was. The public – and in particular fit younger people like Lisa – have every right to feel aggrieved.

    As this newspaper reported yesterday, the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine has been branded “defective” in a multi-million pound landmark legal action which will suggest that claims over its efficacy were “vastly overstated”.  The pharmaceutical giant is being sued in a test case by Jamie Scott, a father-of-two who suffered a significant permanent brain injury, and by the widower and two young children of 35-year-old Alpa Tailor. Both damages claims relate to VITT, the condition that killed Lisa Shaw. AstraZeneca says that the vaccine “has continuously been shown to have an acceptable safety profile” and that “regulators around the world consistently state that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of extremely rare potential side-effects.”

    In the months after her death, Gareth, who was “dealing with grief while you’re trying to parent” didn’t have the emotional energy for a legal battle. “I was in the Coroner’s Court in Newcastle when the coroner said there is no doubt Lisa died because of the AstraZeneca jab and the pathologist said the same and the doctor told Lisa while she was still conscious that the Covid jab had done this to her. It’s like they don’t want there to be any written record that they admitted guilt.”

    I must admit there is a strong sense of, “There but for the grace of God go I” when I hear Gareth talking about his wife. I also had the AstraZeneca jab (twice) because, like Lisa, I wanted to reassure my elderly mother and hug her after over a year apart.

    We were all given the impression that the jab could prevent both infection and transmission (why else would they make it mandatory for care home workers?) It sounded brilliant. But the legal claim states, “the absolute risk reduction concerning Covid-19 prevention was only 1.2 per cent”.

    “Lisa thought getting the jab was the right thing to do as everybody did,” Gareth recalls, “The Government kept saying it was safe and effective. We didn’t know there were other countries that were withdrawing the AstraZeneca.”

    Ah, yes, “safe and effective”. How many times did we hear Cabinet ministers intone that reassuring mantra? Yet, use of the word “safe” by any pharmaceutical company advertising a product had been banned for years for exactly that reason – it is misleadingly reassuring. (The Government seems to think the rules didn’t prevent it saying “safe and effective” because it wasn’t advertising a specific product: a Mandy Rice Davis if ever I heard one.)

    Where, you might well ask, was the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency)? Ben Kingsley, a lawyer and co-author of a brilliant and damning new book, The Accountability Deficit, says: “For good reason, the MHRA’s rules did not allow AstraZeneca to promote its vaccine as ‘safe’. Yet, astonishingly, while a raft of other countries were pulling the AZ jab for safety reasons the British regulator stood aside with tragic consequences for Lisa and her family while ministers and the NHS continued to insist that it remained unequivocally safe and effective.”

    It is almost too painful to consider that, 15 days before Lisa Shaw went eagerly to get her Covid jab so she could “hug my mam”, Denmark stopped the use of AstraZeneca in its vaccination rollout after reports of rare but serious cases of blood clots. Finland also announced that it would continue to limit the AstraZeneca vaccine to people aged 65 and over following similar health concerns. Was the MHRA unaware of growing international doubts (AZ was never licensed in the US) or was it, perhaps, rather reluctant to tarnish a great British success story?

    In ethical terms, for a vaccine to be rolled out to people who are not at significant risk from Covid, it would need to be shown to be very safe indeed for those groups. I also clearly remember the head of the Government’s Vaccine Taskforce, Kate Bingham, saying that vaccinating everyone in the country was “not going to happen”. “It’s an adult-only vaccine, for people over 50, focusing on health workers and care home workers and the vulnerable,” she said. Vaccination policy would be aimed at those “most at risk”. She noted that vaccinating healthy people, who are much less likely to have severe outcomes from Covid-19, “could cause them some freak harm”, potentially tipping the scales in terms of the risk-benefit analysis.

    With a heavy heart I’m going to say what should have been said a long time ago. Unlike those who were actually vulnerable to Covid, Lisa Shaw did not need a Covid vaccine; any minuscule benefit to her was outweighed by the small risk. Neither did I (I’d had the virus in January 2020 as plentiful antibodies later attested and enjoyed good immunity). Millions of healthy people queued up for a jab they didn’t require which protected against serious disease in the elderly and vulnerable, but was not necessary for most of the rest of us.

    How this country moved from a policy of only vaccinating those who would benefit to running the risk of inflicting “some freak harm” on people like Lisa Shaw may yet turn out to be one of the great scandals of the age.

    “I put her on a pedestal,” Gareth Eve says of his late wife, “Lisa was only 5ft 2 and I’m 6 foot, but I put her on a pedestal. She was that wonderful. When she died, because of the way that she died after the jab, it was ‘a dirty secret’, you weren’t supposed to talk about. With AstraZeneca, these companies are run by human beings, you would have thought they were run by human beings, Allison, but they don’t want to talk to the people like me…Zachary doesn’t have his mam because the authorities didn’t give us the full picture about the risks.”

    I am not an anti-vaxxer but…. Let’s stop saying that, shall we? There’s no shame in being against giving a vaccine to groups who didn’t need it, and which caused people to be dead who should be alive and taking their eight-year-old son to school.

    Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.

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  • AstraZeneca Says US Approved Lynparza as a Prostate Cancer Treatment

    AstraZeneca Says US Approved Lynparza as a Prostate Cancer Treatment

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    By Anthony O. Goriainoff

    AstraZeneca said Thursday that its and MSD’s Lynparza cancer treatment had been approved in the U.S. for the treatment of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, or mCRPC.

    The Anglo-Swedish pharma giant said Lynparza, in combination with abiraterone and prednisone, reduced the risk of disease progression or…

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  • Tanking Biotech Stocks Will Mean a Big Year for Deals. Who Could Benefit.

    Tanking Biotech Stocks Will Mean a Big Year for Deals. Who Could Benefit.

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    Nearly two years after biotechnology stocks began to tumble, executives at small and midsize companies in the space are finally accepting that share prices aren’t bouncing back anytime soon.

    With reality setting in, it’s a buyer’s market for companies looking for acquisitions and partnerships, according to many of the pharmaceutical and medical technology executives who gathered at this year’s


    J.P. Morgan


    healthcare investor conference, which wrapped up in San Francisco on Thursday.

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  • SII stopped Covishield production in Dec 2021, says CEO Adar Poonawalla

    SII stopped Covishield production in Dec 2021, says CEO Adar Poonawalla

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    Chief Executive Officer of Serum Institute of India (SII), Adar Poonawalla, on Thursday said the vaccine manufacturer stopped the production of Covishield vaccine starting December 2021, and of the total stock available at that time, around 100 million doses had already got expired.

    Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the annual general meeting of Developing Countries Vaccine Manufacturers Network (DCVMN), he said booster vaccines have no demand as there is general lethargy among people and also because they are fed up with the pandemic.

    “Since December 2021, we stopped the production (of Covishield). We had a stock of a few hundred million doses at that time and of that, 100 million doses have already expired,” said Poonawalla when asked about the update on the Covishield vaccine.

    He said the SII’s vaccines are allowed to be mixed.

    “Now, Covovax should be allowed in two weeks. So I think they will and should probably have the policy to mix boosters. If WHO allowed it, then maybe the Indian regulator will and should allow it. But again, boosters have no demand at the moment. There is lethargy generally. People are fed up of COVID, vaccines. To be honest, I am also fed up with it. We all are,” he said.

    Going forward, when people take a few shots every year, they may take anti-coronavirus vaccines and other shots together, Poonawalla said, adding, “It will become that kind of a product.”

    “In India, there is no culture of taking flu shots as we see it in the West. We tried when we launched a few vaccines in 2010. During the H1NI pandemic in 2011, no one took it. Flu is not something that sounds scary to people. They just do not want to take it,” he said.

    Covishield was produced at the SII’s Pune facility with a master seed from Oxford University and AstraZeneca. The SII had announced its partnership with Oxford University to manufacture the vaccine in April 2020.

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