Health News Roundup: Japan's Otsuka Pharma gets FDA approval for Alzheimer's agitation drug; FDA declines to approve ImmunityBio's bladder cancer therapy, shares slump and more

Xu, 35, first lodged the claim against the Beijing Obstetrics and Gynaecology Hospital in 2019, in a landmark case of a Chinese woman fighting for her reproductive rights. South Korea to drop mandatory 7-day quarantine for COVID patients from June South Korea on Thursday lowered its crisis level for COVID-19 and will from June no longer require infected people to quarantine for seven days, dropping one of the country's few remaining pandemic-related restrictions.

Following is a summary of current health news briefs.

Japan's Otsuka Pharma gets FDA approval for Alzheimer's agitation drug

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Otsuka Pharmaceutical's brexpiprazole to treat agitation in patients with Alzheimer's on Thursday, making it the first approved drug for the indication, the company said in a statement. The decision comes after an advisory panel in April voted 9-1 that the company had enough data to identify the population in whom benefits from the treatment outweigh its risks.

FDA declines to approve ImmunityBio's bladder cancer therapy, shares slump

ImmunityBio Inc said on Thursday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has declined to approve its combination therapy to treat a type of bladder cancer due to deficiencies in the company's application. Shares of the therapy developer slumped nearly 57% to $2.69 in premarket trading.

Chinese woman fighting for fertility rights hopes to end single mother stigma

Teresa Xu did not anticipate that five years after she was denied an egg-freezing treatment at a Beijing hospital for being unmarried, her subsequent lawsuit would be at the centre of a debate over reproductive rights in China. Xu, 35, first lodged the claim against the Beijing Obstetrics and Gynaecology Hospital in 2019, in a landmark case of a Chinese woman fighting for her reproductive rights.

South Korea to drop mandatory 7-day quarantine for COVID patients from June

South Korea on Thursday lowered its crisis level for COVID-19 and will from June no longer require infected people to quarantine for seven days, dropping one of the country's few remaining pandemic-related restrictions. Health authorities will still recommend five days of self-isolation for infected people but it will not be mandatory.

Germany's Merck flags decline in operating profit of up to 10% in 2023

Germany's Merck KGaA on Thursday warned that adjusted operating earnings could decline by as much as 10% this year as the outlook for its specialty chemicals business darkened, offsetting an upswing in drug prescriptions. The company said it was expecting between 6.1 billion euros ($6.71 billion) and 6.7 billion euros in 2023 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA), adjusted for one-offs. That is down from 6.8 billion last year.

Chinese baby product firms seek to age up, sell more abroad as population falls

For many of China's manufacturers of baby and children's products, painful reverberations from last year's historic decline in the country's population are already upon them. Domestic sales are shrinking and the scramble is on to develop new streams of revenue, whether that be diversifying into products for adults or boosting offerings in overseas markets with younger populations like Southeast Asia and India.

Italy's Angelini invests up to $506 million in Japan's JCR for epilepsy drug

Family-owned Italian pharmaceutical group Angelini is set to invest up to $505.5 million to fund development of a new treatment for epilepsy by Japan's JCR Pharmaceuticals, capable of penetrating the blood-brain barrier. JCR owns a blood-brain barrier technology, dubbed J-Brain Cargo, which allows biotherapeutics to reach the central nervous system via a mechanism called receptor-mediated transcytosis.

BioNTech, Roche's experimental pancreatic cancer treatment wins Nature plaudit

Scientific journal Nature on Wednesday said a personalised treatment based on messenger RNA by BioNTech potentially bodes well for the future of fighting an extremely aggressive form of cancer after the regimen was shown to trigger a promising immune reaction in some pancreatic cancer patients.

Results of a trial in the first phase of testing on humans showed that half of the 16 trial participants, who had undergone surgery to remove their tumour, had developed T cells that can potentially recognise cancerous cells and stop them from re-emerging, Nature said in a paper on Wednesday.

Japan's Takeda flags profit slide as it bolsters drug pipeline

Japan's Takeda Pharmaceutical Co on Thursday reported annual profit that missed estimates and flagged a decrease in the coming year as its mainstay drugs lose patent protection. Japan's biggest drugmaker spent big in the past year to replenish its pipeline to make up for the loss of exclusivity on big sellers and give it time to develop some 40 treatments in the clinical stage.

Altria agrees to $235 million settlement to resolve Juul-related cases

Altria Group Inc said Wednesday that it will pay $235 million to settle at least 6,000 lawsuits accusing it of fueling a teen vaping epidemic through its former investment in e-cigarette maker Juul Labs Inc. The deal ends nearly all of the litigation brought against the tobacco giant over Juul by local government bodies and individuals across the United States. It came shortly after San Francisco's public school district finished presenting its case against the company in a jury trial, which will now be cut short.