💊 Biogen looks to sell biosimilars business; GSK sues Pfizer over RSV patents; Who cares about pharma quality?

#398 | Probiotics against prediabetes; Bursting viral bubbles; Climate change came for most of us last month

Hello you, dear reader. Welcome back to The Kable. We love bringing you new and exciting updates daily, but what can we do when the updates are hardly new? There’s another outbreak in China, another Big Pharma lawsuit in the US. India’s pharma deficiencies are still under fire. And climate change is still heating things up.

Amidst all this sameness, there is some new news. Taiwan’s Lotus Pharmaceuticals has entered a long-term exclusive partnership with Ireland’s Amarin Corporation. Lotus will distribute and commercialise the drug Vazkepa, prescribed to reduce the risk of cardiovascular events, in 10 countries in Asia, including South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Meanwhile, Biogen is considering selling off its biosimilars business to Samsung Bioepsis, who isn’t a very unlikely candidate given the two companies’ long association. If the sale goes through, reports suggest the deal would be worth less than $770 million.

Mexico has been experiencing a shortage of key pharmaceutical drugs. President López Obrador is proposing a permanent inventory with “all the medicines of the world” as a solution.

In China, mpox cases are rising. All through 2022, only 6 cases were confirmed. For the week ending July 21 this year, the number stood at 117.

And finally, GSK is suing Pfizer in the US. GSK is alleging that the latter’s RSV vaccine infringes on four of its patent rights.