💊 Bayer says no to women's health; Novo Nordisk says yes to higher dose of Semaglutide; Antibiotics not helpful in viral infections

#305 | Music makes meds work better; Alembic Pharma gets US FDA letter; Bird flu remains global jet-setter

Hello there. Welcome to another Monday. Speaking of which, if you hate Mondays, you can make them a bit more tolerable with some brain hacks (more on this in The Kibble).

Notwithstanding the soup it is in with pharma bodies in the UK, Novo Nordisk has reason to celebrate as its trial results for 25 mg, and 50 mg doses of oral Semaglutide showed statistically significant reductions in blood sugar and weight loss.

Indian CRO-CDMO Sai Life Sciences announced the establishment of a GMP kilo lab at its R&D facility in Manchester in the UK. This will enable the company to provide drug substance and intermediates supplies, in quantities ranging from grams to kilograms, required in the drug discovery and development phase.

Companies big and small have been riding the layoff wave. With an $11 million dollar loss in Q3 last year, digital therapeutics company Better Therapeutics is the latest, cutting its workforce by 35%.

In India, the Rajasthan Assembly has passed the Right to Health bill, giving all residents of the state the right to avail of free inpatient and outpatient services at all public and some private health facilities. But the move is not without pushback from the industry.

Artificial intelligence and other new tech have a big role to play in developing better diagnostics, especially for diseases like TB. This Devex piece covers some startups providing much-needed innovation and better disease detection in the Global South.

The UN water conference that we told you about last week concluded with the UN Secretary-General saying that humanity’s survival depends on how we manage water. Big shocker. And while there were many verbal pledges to improve the situation, detailed commitments were lacking. Another big shocker.

You may have temporarily pushed the climate emergency to the back of your mind, but people in Spain haven’t been so lucky. The country’s first major wildfire of the year has destroyed over 3,000 hectares of forest and forced 1,500 people to abandon their homes.

India’s Zydus Lifesciences is recalling over 55,000 bottles of its gout medicine in the US because of failed impurities/degradation specifications.

Meanwhile, the US FDA has issued a Form 483 with two minor procedural observations for Alembic Pharma’s facility in Gujarat, India.

If you’re a senior using marijuana products for medical reasons, you might want to read the heightened risks your choice of pain management involves.

Despite progress in recent years, the slow pace of the decline of TB cases in Africa means that the region risks missing major milestones.

In an interesting development on the bird flu front, wild mammals infected with H5N1 have been behaving in unusual ways, with neurological symptoms showing up as a result of brain infections.

And finally, have you ever wondered why we don’t have vaccines for fungal infections? Wonder no more.