COVID-19

Australia’s hospital and advanced pharmacy workforce is under intensifying strain, with widening shortages, fragile training pipelines and growing inequities in access to essential clinical pharmacy services, according to a landmark national report released today by Advanced Pharmacy Australia.

Australia now has its first national estimate of how many people are living with metastatic breast cancer, following the release of a landmark Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report that fills a longstanding and widely acknowledged data gap in cancer care.

The agreement brings together Imugene’s oncolytic virus CF33-CD19 (onCARlytics) and JW’s CD19-directed autologous CAR-T therapy, Carteyva, in a program that spans preclinical studies through to a Phase 1 investigator-initiated clinical trial in China.

Algorae Pharmaceuticals has announced a new distribution agreement that will see capecitabine supplied in Australia from as early as December.

This external perspective matters because it exposes a truth that insiders have inadvertently normalised. Australia is trapped in a highly technical, self-referential, and fiercely procedural approach to HTA, without agreement on a philosophical foundation to guide decision-making.

Neurizon Therapeutics (ASX:NUZ) Chair Sergio Duchini has told shareholders the company is entering a decisive phase in its mission to bring new treatments to patients with neurodegenerative diseases, describing the past year as one of disciplined execution, strengthened governance, and meaningful scientific progress.

CEO for Pharmacy and Compounding, Russell Hill, said the organisation’s latest research output is a natural extension of the culture Slade has built over generations.

The US Trump administration has announced new pricing outcomes for 15 medicines funded by major government programs, securing what officials describe as an average net reduction of 44 per cent, equivalent to US$12 billion, compared to what the programs paid for the treatments in 2024.

In an outcome that could reverberate across the globe, including Australia and New Zealand, reports suggest that the UK is close to an agreement with the US on raising its cost-effectiveness threshold for reimbursing innovative medicines, effectively agreeing to pay more for new therapies.

Proteomics International (ASX:PIQ) has secured a significant milestone in its push into the US healthcare market, with Medicare authorities setting a national reimbursement price of US$390.75 for its PromarkerD test, a predictive diagnostic for diabetic kidney disease.

Recce Pharmaceuticals (ASX:RCE) has announced promising new preclinical results demonstrating that its lead anti-infective, RECCE 327, delivered via inhalation, can significantly reduce bacterial burden in a validated mouse model of hospital- and ventilator-acquired pneumonia.