Pharmaceutical Market Europe • December 2025 • 8
NEWS
FDA’s drug evaluation chief Richard Pazdur to leave role unexpectedly
Richard Pazdur, head of the US FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), is set to retire less than a month into his new role.
Pazdur, previously head of the FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence, took on the drug evaluation role on 11 November, succeeding George Tidmarsh. Pazdur’s departure comes at a time of significant changes for the FDA after the appointment of Robert F Kennedy Jr as the US health secretary. The FDA’s vaccine chief, Peter Marks, left in April and was replaced by Vinay Prasad.
After a period of upheaval, it was hoped that Pazdur’s appointment to lead the CDER would bring some much-needed stability to the agency.
Pazdur’s first role at the FDA in 1999 was to lead its Division of Oncology Drug Products, having previously served at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
He became founding director of the Oncology Center of Excellence in 2017, working to advance innovations in cancer treatments.
Pazdur’s retirement will result in both the drug division and the oncology centre being left with top-level vacancies.
Major prostate cancer screening trial launched in UK
The biggest prostate cancer screening trial in decades has been launched in the UK, with the goal of finding the best way to detect the disease.
The £42m Transform trial, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research and Prostate Cancer UK, will recruit men aged 50-74, with a lower age limit of 45 for black men, whose risk of developing and dying from prostate cancer is double that of white men.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, but it is also one of the only cancers without a reliable screening method. PSA tests, which search for high levels of protein in the blood, can be requested by men over 50, but are unreliable.
The Transform trial will use new methods to search for prostate cancer by investigating how PSA testing could be combined with rapid MRI scans of the prostate. It will also compare PSA tests with spit tests.
The Transform trial’s initial results are expected in around two years, following which the trial will be expanded to up to 300,000 men nationwide.
UK and US agree on landmark pharma pricing tariff deal
The UK and US have agreed to keep tariffs on UK pharmaceutical shipments into the US at zero.
The agreement states that the UK will pay more for medicines through the NHS, in exchange for an agreement that US import taxes on UK-produced pharmaceuticals will remain at zero for three years. This will be the first time in over 20 years that the amount the NHS pays for medicines will increase.
Branded drugs are one of the UK’s biggest exports to the US. Figures from the Department for Business and Trade showed that, in the 12 months ending in September 2025, the UK exported £11.1bn worth of medicines to the US.
The terms of the new deal state that the UK will increase the price threshold at which it deems medicines too expensive by 25%. It will also increase overall NHS spending on medicines, aiming to increase spending from 0.3% of GDP to 0.6% of GDP over the next decade.
In return, UK exports of pharmaceuticals will be exempt from any US tariff increases for the next three years.
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