Top news
* Dova Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for Doptelet, which treats low blood platelet count in adults with chronic liver disease who are scheduled to have medical or dental procedures, is the first FDA approval for an oral drug to treat the condition known as thrombocytopenia. Patients previously would have had to undergo a platelet transfusion before surgery to prevent excessive bleeding.
* The World Health Organization said it has started vaccinating health workers and others in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Mbandaka and Bikoro regions with Merck & Co. Inc.'s rVSV?G-ZEBOV vaccine, of which 7,450 doses are currently available. The WHO and partner organizations are conducting ring vaccinations, which inoculate rings of people around the Ebola-infected patients.
On the policy front
* Legislation that would give U.S. patients greater access to experimental drugs beyond the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's current compassionate-use process is on the verge of becoming law after the House Rules Committee cleared the bill's way for debate and a vote on the chamber's floor.
* The Nipah virus, flagged by the WHO as having the potential to trigger a major outbreak, has killed nine people in the state of Kerala, India, CNBC reported.
* A European consortium focused on the development of therapies for children has launched a €140 million collaboration project between academia and the private sector to build the infrastructure to conduct multinational clinical trials for children across Europe.
* Amgen Inc. said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved its medicine Prolia to treat patients with a certain type of osteoporosis, a disease involving weakening of bones.
* New York-based Avenue Therapeutics Inc., a unit of Fortress Biotech Inc., said the phase 3 trial of injectable tramadol, a pain drug, met its main goal. Tramadol is an opioid pain medication that is taken orally.
* Dublin-based Nabriva Therapeutics PLC said the phase 3 trial of oral lefamulin in community-acquired bacterial pneumonia met its main goal.
* Interim results from a phase 3 trial showed that certain patients with urinary system cancer treated with Israel-based UroGen Pharma Ltd.'s investigational drug MitoGel, or UGN-101, had no detectable signs of cancer after treatment.
* The Cambridge, Mass.-based Sesen Bio Inc., previously known as Eleven Biotherapeutics Inc., said the initial three-month results from an ongoing phase 3 trial of its medicine Vicinium showed no detectable signs of a certain type of bladder cancer in a number of patients.
Operational activity
* Germany's Evotec AG and Celgene Corp. entered a collaboration to discover and develop therapies for cancer, with Evotec receiving an up-front payment of $65 million and potential future milestone payments and royalties.
* Tokyo-based Astellas Pharma Inc. said it will restructure its Japanese operations, including research & development as well as sales & marketing, which could involve the early retirement of 600 employees.
Other features
* STAT wrote that patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a group of rare neurological diseases, are unable to access Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corp.'s recently approved therapy Radicava as the drug's high price has resulted in low insurance coverage.
* Mel Greaves, a researcher at the Institute for Cancer Research in London, has proposed that parents may be able to help prevent leukemia in children by strengthening their immune systems with exposure to common infections, the Financial Times wrote. The analysis from Greaves, who the FT hails as one of Britain's leading oncologists, extends the "hygiene hypothesis" used to explain an increased prevalence of allergies and autoimmune disorders to leukemia.
* Researchers in the U.S. are trying to extract data from thousands of documents with varying formats as they build a database from medical records of cancer patients, The New York Times wrote.
The day ahead
Early morning futures indicators pointed to a higher opening for the U.S. market.
In Asia, the Nikkei 225 dropped 0.18% to 22,960.34.
In Europe, around midday, the FTSE 100 climbed 0.20% to 7,874.50, and the Euronext 100 gained 0.12% to 1,087.44.
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