Tag - pharmaceuticals

 
 

PHARMACEUTICALS

Obstetrician and gynecologist Song Mihyon
JAPAN / Science & Health
Mar 7, 2025
Doctor urges awareness of a birth control pill covered by health insurance
“I think doctors need to tell their patients that a birth control pill covered by health insurance exists,” Song Mihyon said.
Foster City, California’s Gilead is laser-focused on HIV and is seeking an actual cure.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 6, 2025
Gilead's Japan head says nation can be among first to end HIV epidemic
The pharmaceutical powerhouse has drugs that disrupt the transmission of the virus, one of which has been approved for prevention in Japan.
Kesa Hatamoto, a 102-year-old Japanese woman who is recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest pharmacist, speaks during an interview on Jan. 28 in Tokyo's Meguro Ward.
JAPAN
Mar 6, 2025
At 102, world's oldest pharmacist celebrates her calling
"There's nothing happier than having a job for a lifetime. I want to continue my career forever," says Kesa Hatamoto.
Blackstone said it agreed to purchase 60% of Tokyo-based CMIC, a contract research organization, in a deal that values the company in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 3, 2025
Blackstone buys Japan drug trial firm, adding to private equity health deals
Blackstone has been increasingly active in Japan’s life science sector amid a wider buyout boom in the country.
Newly manufactured cars ready for shipping. U.S. President Donald Trump said he is likely to impose new 25% tariffs on imported cars, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals in the coming months.
BUSINESS / Markets
Feb 19, 2025
Trump floats 25% tariffs on U.S. auto, drug and chip imports
The U.S. president has also threatened other streams of tariffs, all part of an effort to reconfigure the country's trading relationships across the globe.
Too many people die from treatable diseases in places with little access to health care. To prevent this from happening, affordability, availability and acceptability considerations must be at the core of medical products' lifecycles, starting with R & D.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 13, 2025
To stop preventable deaths, start with the fundamentals
Treatable diseases like malaria are still causing too many deaths in places with poor health care. To prevent these, accessibility must be baked into medical development.
Kobayashi Pharmaceutical President and CEO Satoshi Yamane apologizes for the company's health hazard scandal involving its supplement products during a news conference in Osaka on Monday.
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 11, 2025
Kobayashi Pharma logs first net profit drop since 1999 listing
The company's net profit plunged 50.5% in the aftermath of a health scandal involving its supplements, which emerged last year.
Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma will be acquired by U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital for ¥510 billion.
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 9, 2025
Bain to acquire Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma in $3.3 billion deal
Tanabe Pharma focuses on therapeutic areas such as immunology and inflammation, vaccines, diabetes, and central nervous system and metabolic disease.
Fentanyl precursors on display in Mexico City on Oct. 4, 2023. Chemical components are said to be shipped from China to Mexico, where they are then made into fentanyl and smuggled across the border.
ASIA PACIFIC / Crime & Legal
Feb 4, 2025
How China allegedly contributes to the deadly fentanyl crisis
Chemical components are said to be shipped from China to Mexico, where they are then made into fentanyl and smuggled across the border.
AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo’s Datroway breast cancer treatment, which the companies expect will eventually become a blockbuster, was recommended for approval in the European Union.
BUSINESS
Jan 31, 2025
AstraZeneca and Daiichi’s breast cancer drug gets EU backing
The green light from the European Medicines Agency is the first backing in the EU for the medicine, following its approval in the U.S. and Japan.
Takeda Pharmaceutical's headquarters in Tokyo
BUSINESS / Companies
Jan 30, 2025
Takeda picks first female CEO of centuries-old drugmaker
Julie Kim, 54, has been running Takeda’s U.S. operations since 2022 and will assume the role of CEO in June next year, subject to shareholder approval, the company said.
Kobayashi Pharmaceutical executives bow their heads at a news conference in Osaka in March following a health hazard scandal involving the firm's supplements containing red fermented rice.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Jan 29, 2025
Hong Kong fund to sue former Kobayashi Pharma execs
The fund will seek a total of roughly ¥11 billion in damages from former Chairman Kazumasa Kobayashi and six then-board directors.
In 2024, child mortality for children before the age of 5 reached a record low of 3.6%, down from over 25% in 1950. For most of history, about half of all newborns died as children.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 22, 2025
Even this year is the best time ever to be alive
Another way of looking at it: Every day over the past couple of years, roughly 30,000 people moved out of extreme poverty worldwide.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval of novel breast cancer treatment by Daiichi Sankyo and AstraZeneca led Daiichi Sankyo's shares to post the largest intraday gain since August on Monday.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jan 20, 2025
Daiichi Sankyo rises most in five months on cancer drug approval
Datroway, developed with AstraZeneca, has been approved for patients with advanced breast tumors.
Daiichi Sankyo's headquarters in Tokyo
BUSINESS
Jan 18, 2025
AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo win U.S. approval for breast cancer drug
The Food and Drug Administration approved the drug for patients with advanced breast tumors whose cells bear a certain genetic signature.
A research team from Nagoya University and other institutions hopes that further testing on humans involving the antioxidant luteolin will lead to the development of a drug for preventing or reducing gray hair.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Jan 14, 2025
Antioxidant found in broccoli, celery suppresses gray hair in mice
Researchers hope that further testing on humans could lead to the development of a drug that would prevent or reduce gray hair.
Cancer patient Anne Maldzinski was given an experimental therapy developed by French biotech MaaT Pharma through an early access program. The effect was dramatic.
WORLD / Science & Health
Jan 9, 2025
Drug from bowel bacteria helps blood cancer patients facing deadly complication
A burgeoning field of therapies is harnessing the power of the microbiome to treat and potentially prevent diseases.
While many patients showed improvement in Fanconi syndrome, 87% still had kidney function indicators below standard levels despite two months having passed since Kobayashi Pharmaceutical urged consumers to stop taking the supplement.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Jan 8, 2025
Tainted beni kōji supplement linked to persistent kidney damage, study finds
The Osaka University study analyzed data from patients who reported health issues between late March and late April 2024.
Five years since COVID-19 started upending the world, the virus is still infecting and killing people across the globe — though at far lower levels than during the height of the pandemic.
WORLD / Science & Health
Jan 8, 2025
Is the world ready for the next pandemic?
While the U.N. health agency considers the world more prepared than it was when Covid hit, it warns we are still not nearly ready enough.
A woman receives a COVID-19 vaccine in Minato Ward, Tokyo, in October.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Dec 29, 2024
Meiji Seika Pharma files suit against lawmaker over 'unfounded' vaccine claims
CDP Lower House lawmaker Kazuhiro Haraguchi has said that the drugmaker's replicon vaccine is "akin to a biological weapon."

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone.
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan