Astellas' short-lived lawsuit against the Inflation Reduction Act, Otsuka's $59 million purchase of Mindset Pharma and Takeda's hefty payment to AbbVie made our news this week.
Astellaspanese pharma companies lead our news stories from Asia thiOtsuka. Astellas has abandoned itMindset PharmaainstTakedanflation Reduction AAbbViesuka bought a Canadian psychedelic biotech. And Takeda has been ordered to pay AbbVie because of a manufacturing hiccup. Plus more. LesAstellaswo months after filing a legal challenge against the Inflation Reduction Act, Astellas decided to pull out. The Japanese pharma has requested that a U.S. court dismiss the company’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the act. The move came after Astellas’ Pfizer-partnered prostate cancer drug Xtandi didn’t get onto the first list of drugs up for Medicare price negotiation. OtsOtsukaarmaceutical is paying $59 million to purchase Canadian biotech Mindset Pharma. The deal gives Otsuka a preclinical pipeline of psychedelics. The most advanced asset, MSP-1014, is a psilocybinlike conjugate still in the lead optimization phase. Mindset has suggested the drug might be useful for depression. Otsuka has two marketed antipsychotic agents—Abilify and Rexulti—partnered with Lundbeck. A DAbbViee court has sided with AbbVie inTakedaach of contract lawsuit against Takeda. The court is granting AbbVie nearly all of the $480.6 million it was seeking in damages from the Japanese pharma over supply problems for Lupron. The court had previously ruled that Takeda breached its contract when manufacturing issues at its plant led to a shortage of AbbVie’s drug. Celltrion plans tCelltrion$126 million Korean won ($94.5 million) to build a new production facility at the company’s Songdo campus near Seoul, Korea Biomedical Review reports. Expected to be operational by 2027, the new facility will have an annual capacity of 8 million vials. Celltrion buys US plant for $7.7M, advances Viatris integration efforts and plots hires BioBioconnerics acquired Eywa Pharma’s New JViatrisolid dosage manufacturing plant for $7.7 million. The facility has room to grow production capacity to 2 billion tablets or capsules a year, Biocon said. Separately, Biocon Biologics just completed the integration of Viatris’ biosimilars franchise in North America. Harvest Integrated Research Organization, or HiRO, has acquired Minnesota-based Courante Oncology. With the deal, HiRO, a Singapore-based CRO, is getting a boost in oncology services and a global footprint. Financial terms were not disclosed.