Protecting Access, Advancing Cures

Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: VNDA) has landed another regulatory approval, this time for a schizophrenia and bipolar treatment - two months after securing a nod to take a motion sickness medication to market... Read more at WBJ .

The program was meant to help hospitals provide for poor patients by offering drug savings. But critics say a Texas company has turned it into a big business, driving up costs for patients and insurers. Read more at NYT .

Across the country, pharmacies are closing at a rapid pace, and advocates are warning it’s a serious life-or-death situation. “We’re starting to see that there's not only issues with access but also issues with the chronic diseases, people [in] emergency rooms, people get sicker and people really dying if we're going to be blunt about it,” said Magaly Rodriguez de Bittner, associate dean at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy... Read the full article at WMAR 2 .

Maryland is becoming the home away from home for British drugmaker AstraZeneca. On Friday, the biopharma powerhouse upped its ante in the Old Line State, saying it will invest $2 billion to increase its manufacturing presence there. The funding will allow AZ to nearly double the production capacity at its flagship biologics plant in Federick, Maryland, and also provide for the manufacture of the company's rare disease products there for the first time, AZ said. Read the full