UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock (pictured right) has unveiled the new body that is set to replace Public Health England (PHE), days after reports that the agency was to be axed over its coronavirus response.

The new National Institute for Health Protection (NIHP) will replace PHE, and is set to be led by Baroness Dido Harding, the current head of NHS Test and Trace in England.

It will be closely modelled on Germany’s Robert Koch Institute, a government agency which is solely focused on disease control and prevention.

According to a statement from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), the NIHP will start work immediately, with a focus on the country’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The organisation will then be finalised and fully operational from spring 2021. Under the new body, PHE and NHS Test and Trace will be combined, along with the Joint Biosecurity Centre, under a single leadership team.

“To give ourselves the best chance of beating this virus once and for all – and of spotting and being ready to respond to other health threats, now and in the future – we are creating a brand new organisation to provide a new approach to public health protection and resilience,” said Hancock.

Takeda is on the verge of selling its consumer health unit in Japan for up to $2.3bn to Blackstone Group, an American investment firm.

The portfolio to be divested to Blackstone includes a range of Takeda’s over-the-counter (OTC) medicines and health products, such as its regional brand Alinamin, a vitamin B1 derivative, and Benza, a cold remedy.

According to a statement from Takeda, Blackstone intends to develop the business together with Takeda Consumer Health Company’s (TCHC) current management and continue to employee existing staff members.

Last year, Takeda acquired Irish biotech company Shire for £46bn, which gave the Japanese pharma company access to a solid platform of rare diseases.

However, the takeover also meant that Takeda inherited a massive amount of debt, which the company plans to reduce by divesting up to $10bn in non-core assets.

This included offloading a number of its OTC and prescription medicines in emerging markets in Near East, Middle East and Africa (NEMEA) countries to Acino for $200m.

The Japanese pharma also entered an agreement with Stada last October to divest a portfolio of select OTC drugs for a total value of $660m.

The Stada deal includes OTC vitamins and food supplements, and select products in the cardiovascular, diabetes, general medicine and respiratory therapeutic areas.

Nestlé has announced plans to acquire allergy specialist Aimmune Therapeutics in a deal worth $2.6bn, six months after the biopharmaceutical company’s Palforzia became the first peanut allergy drug to be cleared for use in the US.

Currently, Nestlé has a 25% equity ownership stake in Aimmune, but is set to acquire the outstanding shares in an all-cash offer made through its health division, Nestlé Health Science. The deal is subject to customary closing conditions, although Nestlé expects the transaction to close in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Palforzia, previously known as AR101, was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in January for use in children aged four to 17 with a confirmed diagnosis of peanut allergy.
The oral immunotherapy is comprised of defatted peanut flour that is sprinkled over food and given in small but gradually increasing amounts over a six-month period, with the aim of encouraging the immune system to develop a tolerance to peanut allergies.

Aimmune’s launch of Palforzia has been hampered by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as the health crisis continues to have an impact in the US.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Novartis’ relapsing multiple sclerosis (MS) treatment Kesimpta, one of the company’s most promising growth drivers as identified by CEO Vas Narasimhan.

The approval is based on results from the phase 3 ASCLEPIOS I and II studies, in which Kesimpta (ofatumumab) demonstrated superiority over Sanofi’s Aubagio (teriflunomide) in reducing the number of confirmed relapses in patients with relapsing forms of MS.

Kesimpta also met the key secondary endpoints, which included delaying time to confirmed disability progression, in the head-to-head study.

The drug is already approved for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL), with the clinical development programme in relapsing MS taking ten years from the initiation of early studies to achieving regulatory approval.

Kesimpta’s approval in relapsing MS builds on Novartis’ existing presence in the therapy area, which includes its active secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (SPMS) therapy Mayzent (siponimod).

However, the drug will have fierce competition in the market, from rivals such as Roche’s Ocrevus (ocrelizumab) and Sanofi’s Aubagio, despite touting superior efficacy data over the latter.
Both Kesimpta and Ocrevus selectively target the immune system’s CD20-positive B cells that image nerve tissue and cause disease progression.