Exclusive-China's Sciwind is in talks to license weight-loss drug in US, CEO says
HANGZHOU (Reuters) -China's Sciwind Biosciences is in talks with a U.S. company interested in licensing its experimental weight-loss drug for American patients, the drugmaker's chief executive told Reuters.
Overweight patients treated with Sciwind's ecnoglutide drug lost an average of 10% to 15% of their body weight, roughly in line with results from Novo Nordisk's top-selling obesity treatment Wegovy, according to a late-stage study published in medical journal The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology in June.
'We also hope we are able to successfully license out, and they will apply for approval in the U.S.,' Sciwind Biosciences CEO Pan Hai said, declining to identify the firm or disclose financial terms under discussion.
Reuters is the first to report on the potential U.S. licensing deal.
Pan said its potential partner hoped to gain U.S. marketing approval to prescribe ecnoglutide for multiple medical conditions and would carry out further clinical development. The talks are not yet at the stage of discussing a detailed contract, he added.
Sciwind is hoping the partner could use clinical data accumulated in China and Australia to accelerate the development.
Pan expects it would take at least three years for a U.S. partner to bring Sciwind's drug to market in the United States, and said the FDA might require a bridging study to compare ecnoglutide's pharmacokinetics - how it moves through the body - among different patient populations.
Ecnoglutide is administered as a once-weekly injection. It belongs to a class of drugs called GLP-1 receptor agonists, which work by helping control blood sugar levels and triggering a feeling of fullness.
Novo's Wegovy and Eli Lilly and Co's Zepbound lead the U.S. market for weight-loss drugs, but their relatively high prices leave room for new competitors to offer cheaper alternatives.
Sciwind has applied to sell ecnoglutide in China for weight management and the treatment of type II diabetes. Other approved weight loss medicines in China also include drugs from Novo, Lilly and other drugmakers. Pan said he could not give an estimated time of approval.
The company is also in talks to license the drug to partners for other markets, including in Latin America and the Middle East.
Pricing in China would be in line with other approved competitors, Pan said, adding the company would not engage in a "price war" there.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Insider
27 minutes ago
- Business Insider
Bangladesh ordered 25 Boeing planes in effort to lower tariffs, Reuters says
Bangladesh has ordered 25 Boeing (BA) aircraft and increased imports of American goods in an effort to diffuse trade tensions and lower tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, Reuters reports. Elevate Your Investing Strategy: Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence. Published first on TheFly – the ultimate source for real-time, market-moving breaking financial news. Try Now>>
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
No meals, fainting nurses, dwindling baby formula: Starvation haunts Gaza hospitals
After months of warnings, international agencies, experts and doctors say starvation is now sweeping across Gaza amid restrictions on aid imposed by Israel for months. At least 56 Palestinians died this month of starvation in the territory, nearly half of the total of such deaths since the war began 22 months ago, according to data released Saturday by the Gaza Health Ministry. As starvation rises, medical institutions and staff, already struggling to treat war wounds and illness, are now grappling with rising cases of malnourishment. Advertisement Weak and dizzy, medics are passing out in the wards, where colleagues revive them with saline and glucose drips. Persistently short of basic tools such as antibiotics and painkillers, doctors are also running out of the special intravenous drips used to feed depleted patients. In all four hospitals, the doctors described how they are increasingly unable to save malnourished babies and are instead forced to simply manage their decline. The babies are too weak to be flooded with nutrients, which could overload their system and cause them to suffer 'refeeding syndrome,' which could kill them. Advertisement In some cases, the fluids that the doctors can safely give to the babies are not enough to prevent them from dying. 'I have seen ones that are imminently about to pass away,' said Dr. Ambereen Sleemi, an American surgeon who has been volunteering since early July at the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. The babies were brought to the hospital 'starving and malnourished,' Sleemi said in a phone interview Friday, 'and they haven't been able to get them back from the brink.' Dr. Nick Maynard, a British surgeon who volunteered at the same hospital until Wednesday, described the shock of seeing a skeletal infant who looked only days old, but was in fact 7 months. 'The expression 'skin and bones' doesn't do it justice,' Maynard said in a phone interview Friday. 'I saw the severity of malnutrition that I would not have thought possible in a civilized world. This is man-made starvation being used as a weapon of war and it will lead to many more deaths unless food and aid is let in immediately.' Asked for comment, COGAT, the Israeli military department that oversees aid to Gaza, said it 'continues to work in coordination with international actors to allow and facilitate the continued entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, in accordance with international law.' Late on Saturday night, the Israeli military began to drop airborne aid over northern Gaza, and said it would pause its military activity for several hours a day in key areas to make it easier to deliver aid by land. One-third of Palestinians in Gaza are forced to go without food for days in a row, the World Food Program said recently. Of the young children and pregnant women treated at clinics run by Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, roughly one-fourth are suffering from malnutrition, the medical aid group said last week. Advertisement Doctors say that many other people have likely died from different conditions and injuries that could have been cured or healed if the victims had not been so weakened by malnourishment. Starvation is causing more mothers to suffer miscarriages or give birth prematurely, to malnourished babies with weakened immune systems and medical abnormalities. 'The result is a rise in infections, dehydration and even immune collapse in infants,' said Dr. Hani al-Faleet, a pediatric consultant at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza. 'The immediate cause of death in some of these cases is simple: The baby doesn't get enough to eat, and neither does the mother.' Starvation has risen sharply since Israel's total blockade on food aid to Gaza between early March and late May, doctors and rights groups say. While Israel has since allowed food in, it introduced a new method of distribution that is flawed and dangerous, making it almost impossible for Palestinians to find food safely or affordably. Before March, food handouts were mainly distributed under a U.N.-led system from hundreds of points close to where people lived. Now, they are supplied from a handful of sites run by Israeli-backed private American contractors that, for most Palestinians in Gaza, can be reached only by walking for miles through Israeli military lines. Israeli soldiers have killed hundreds of people walking these routes, turning the daily search for food into a deadly trap. Advertisement Some food is still available from shops in Palestinian-run areas, but only at astronomic prices that are unaffordable to the largely unemployed civilian population. A kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of flour costs up to $30, and a kilogram of tomatoes costs roughly $30; meat and rice are largely unavailable on the open market. That has forced many Palestinians to routinely choose between two often fatal options: risk death by starvation, or risk death by gunfire to reach food aid sites that are likely to have run out of supplies by the time many arrive. Israel publicly says the new aid system is necessary to prevent Hamas from stealing the aid. But Israeli military officials have acknowledged to The New York Times that they have no proof that Hamas has systematically stolen food supplied by the United Nations, the main provider of aid to Gaza during most of the war. Israel says that its soldiers have fired 'warning shots' to quell unrest along the roads leading to the aid sites. Maynard and Sleemi described injuries that indicated soldiers had systematically fired at people's torsos. Israel also blames the United Nations for failing to deliver enough food to alleviate the situation. Israel said Saturday that it had destroyed up to 100 truckloads of food in recent months because aid groups could not distribute the food before it passed its use-by date. U.N. officials say that Israeli restrictions have made it difficult to send convoys through an active war zone. The food shortages add another challenge to an already very difficult environment for doctors. 'Some staff members have collapsed in operating rooms. Others have fainted in emergency wards because they have not received any proper food,' said Dr. Mohammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. 'The burden on them is immense.' Advertisement Salam Barghouth, a 3-month-old baby girl treated for malnutrition last week at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, is among the youngest Palestinians failed by the new aid distribution system. Her mother, Hanin Barghouth, 22, is too weak to walk to the new distribution sites. Her father, Akram Barghouth, 27, has never managed to reach the sites before the aid runs out, Hanin Barghouth said. Like most Palestinians, the parents are jobless, rely on donations from relatives and friends and said they survive mostly on falafel balls that cost roughly 10 times their prewar price. As a result, Barghouth regularly skips meals and says she has lost 29 pounds, a fifth of her body weight, since the start of the war. She cannot produce enough breast milk to feed Salam, who was born April 21, after Israel started the blockade. At Salam's birth, according to al-Faleet, her doctor, she weighed roughly 6.6 pounds. Three months later, she weighs only 8.8 -- at least 3 pounds underweight, the doctor said. 'I'm breastfeeding her as much as I can, and when I can't, I give her formula -- but that's only when I have it,' Barghouth said. She is reaching the end of a container of formula that she said cost roughly $120, approximately 2 1/2 times the amount it costs outside Gaza. 'She came into the world during a war,' Barghouth added, 'and I'm fighting every day to keep her alive in it.' While Salam Barghouth can still access medical support in central Gaza, other starving children farther to the north are struggling to find it because aid groups have found it harder to bring supplies to them. Advertisement One of them is Yazan Abu al-Foul, 2, a child living with his family in a damaged building beside a beach in Gaza City. His ribs, spine and hip bones jut from his body. An aunt, Riwaa Abu al-Foul, said Yazan's family cannot find enough food to feed him and hospital staff in his area have told them that they cannot provide him with inpatient care. 'They told us there is a shortage of materials and equipment,' Abu al-Foul said in a phone interview Saturday. Doctors at hospitals in northern, central and southern Gaza described similar hardships in interviews Friday and Saturday. 'There are no nutritional supplements, no vitamins, no premature infant formula, no amino acid intravenous solutions -- nothing,' Abu Salmiya said. 'Their bodies need these basics, and without them they will die.' This article originally appeared in
UPI
2 hours ago
- UPI
Boeing machinists who build fighter jets reject contract, plan strike
A large American flag is hoisted behind a Boeing F/A-18 E1 Super Hornet jet before dedication ceremonies at the National Museum of Transportation in Kirkwood, Mo., on August 3, 2024. Machinists at three plants in the St. Louis area the product fight jets rejected a contract. File Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo July 27 (UPI) -- Several thousand Boeing union workers at three St. Louis-area plants who build fighter jets are planning to go on strike after rejecting a proposed contract Sunday that would pay an average of than $100,000 per year. Members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers at Boeing factories in St. Louis and St. Charles in Missouri and Mascoutah in Illinois voted against the new contract that included a 20% wage increase over four years. The contract for District 837 members will expire at 11:59 p.m. CDT at which point there is a seven-day cooling-off period before a strike could start. In all, there are 16,000 employees at the three locations, according to St. Louis Business Journal Research. "IAM Union members delivered a clear message: the proposal from Boeing Defense fell short of addressing the priorities and sacrifices of the skilled IAM Union workforce," the union said in a news release. "Our members are standing together to demand a contract that respects their work and ensures a secure future." Boeing and the union representing the machinists on Thursday reached an agreement on a four-year contract that would boost annual salaries to $102,600 with an 8% increase in the first year and 4% for the other three years. "This contract puts money in members' pockets, protects healthcare access, and ensures our members have a voice in future health decisions all while respecting the skill and dedication IAM workers bring to Boeing's critical defense programs," IAM Union International President Brian Bryant said after the tentative contract. The total increase would be 40% when including other benfits. There was a $5,000 ratification bonus. Boeing said the current average hourly pay of $35 is $6 higher than three years ago. "The IAM Union remains committed to achieving a fair contract that meets the needs of our members," the union said. "The IAM Union looks forward to returning to the bargaining table with Boeing's leadership to deliver meaningful improvements that support the well-being and livelihoods of IAM members and their families." IAM, with approximately 600,000 active and retired workers, is one of North America's largest and most diverse industrial trade unions. They represent workers in aerospace/airlines, defense, shipbuilding, railroads/transit, healthcare and automotive in the United States and Canada. "We're disappointed our employees voted down the richest contract offer we've ever presented to IAM 837 which addressed all their stated priorities," Dan Gillian, Boeing Air Dominance vice President, said in a statement, obtained by KSDK-TV. "We've activated our contingency plan and are focused on preparing for a strike. No talks are scheduled with the union." Last year, Boeing machinists in the Pacific Northwest were in a 54-day strike that shut down airplane production. Ultimately, they agreed to an immediate pay boost of 13% and a total of 44% over four years when compounded. Boeing has more than 170,000 employees worldwide. The vote came two days before Boeing plans to announce its second-quarter earnings.
