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House to begin drug pricing hearing; China highlights cancer in health strategy

Top news

* House members will get their first chance this week to weigh in on Speaker Nancy Pelosi's drug pricing legislation — a hearing where Democrats are expected to not only clash with Republicans but also potentially with members of their own party. The House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee will also use the Sept. 25 hearing to vet three other bills focused on lowering drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries through direct negotiations between the government and manufacturers.

* Chinese regulators said they will accelerate the approval process for anti-cancer treatments and aim for a simultaneous release of overseas cancer drugs in the country. China is looking to improve the five-year survival rate for cancer by 3% in 2020 compared to 2015, China's National Health Commissions said in a document released on Sept. 23. The document explains how the country will achieve its Healthy China 2030 strategy in terms of cancer prevention and treatments.

* The healthcare industry is a major contributor to climate change, emitting 4.4% of global greenhouse gases, a report published by nonprofit organization Health Care Without Harm and engineering consulting firm Arup Ltd showed. If the health sector were a country, it would be the fifth-largest emitter on the planet, the report on the industry's climate footprint said. The sector includes life sciences tools, equipment, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, providers and facilities.

* Countries need to increase healthcare spending by at least an additional 1% of their GDP to help remove coverage gaps and meet health targets set in 2015, a report from the World Health Organization and partners said. The U.N. agency warned in the report that if current trends remain, up to 5 billion people will have no healthcare access by 2030. However, if an additional $200 billion is allocated each year to expand primary healthcare across low and middle-income nations, about 60 million lives could potentially be saved, with increased average life expectancy by 3.7 years in 2030, the report noted.

M&A and capital markets

* Germany's Merck KGaA completed its $62 million acquisition of San Jose, Calif.-based advanced materials company Intermolecular Inc.

* Neurodegenerative disease-focused Annovis Bio Inc. expects to price its IPO of 1,428,571 common shares between $6 and $8 on the NYSE American.

Drug and product pipeline

* Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd. is stopping the global distribution of ranitidine, a generic version of the Zantac brand sold by French drugmaker Sanofi, as a result of an ongoing U.S. Food and Drug Administration investigation, Bloomberg News reported, citing an email from a company spokeswoman. The FDA and European Medicines Agency are reviewing the stomach medicine after tests showed that some of the products contained a potentially cancer-causing impurity called N-nitrosodimethylamine, or NDMA.

* Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. said Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare approved its parent Roche Holding AG's Tecentriq for patients whose triple negative breast cancer shows the presence of PD-L1, a protein found on cancer cells.

* Novo Nordisk A/S' oral pill Rybelsus was granted approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to manage the blood sugar levels of adult patients with type 2 diabetes. The Danish drugmaker's Rybelsus is the first glucagon-like peptide receptor protein treatment approved in the U.S. that does not need to be injected, the FDA said.

* Merck & Co. Inc. said the FDA approved the expanded use of Delstrigo and Pifeltro for HIV-1 patients with undetectable levels of the virus in their blood.

Operational activity

* The uncertainties of Brexit are leading to major logistics issues for the pharmaceutical sector. Novo Nordisk's UK General Manager Pinder Sahota said it is "unprecedented from a logistics point of view," while Sanofi's UK MD Hugo Fry stated that short-term measures are difficult to implement as firms "have to test and validate these routes into the country" in relation to insulin.

* Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH signed a co-development and license deal worth up to $160 million with Inflammasome Therapeutics Inc. to develop up to three new therapies for retinal diseases: age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema.

The day ahead

Early morning futures indicators pointed to a mixed opening for the U.S. market.

In Asia, the Hang Seng declined 0.81% to 26,222.40.

In Europe, around midday, the FTSE 100 was down 0.53% to 7,305.56, and the Euronext 100 was down 0.86% to 1,089.26.

Click here to read about today's financial markets, setting out the factors driving stocks, bonds and currencies around the world ahead of the New York open.

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