A pan­el of CDC vac­cine ad­vi­sors has stopped rec­om­mend­ing that all chil­dren re­ceive the he­pati­tis B vac­cine at birth, over­rul­ing sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus and pub­lic health of­fi­cials who plead­ed that there was no ground­ed ra­tio­nale for the move.

The ma­jor­i­ty of mem­bers of the Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Im­mu­niza­tion Prac­tices vot­ed on Fri­day that preg­nant women who test neg­a­tive for he­pati­tis B should con­sult a health­care provider be­fore giv­ing their new­born a shot. Eight mem­bers vot­ed in fa­vor of the change and three vot­ed against it. The rec­om­men­da­tion stops short of ex­plic­it­ly rec­om­mend­ing that some chil­dren not re­ceive the birth dose, in­stead putting the de­ci­sion on in­di­vid­u­als.

The com­mit­tee al­so vot­ed to rec­om­mend that par­ents con­sult a health­care provider to see if a child should get test­ed for their an­ti­body lev­els against he­pati­tis B be­fore re­ceiv­ing ad­di­tion­al dos­es in the vac­ci­na­tion se­ries.

Bris­tol My­ers Squibb’s CAR-T ther­a­py Breyanzi has be­come the first such treat­ment ap­proved for pa­tients with a rare, slow-grow­ing type of non-Hodgkin lym­phoma.

The drug was ap­proved Thurs­day for third-line pa­tients with mar­gin­al zone lym­phoma, which oc­curs when white blood cells clump to­geth­er and form lumps in lymph nodes or or­gans. Pa­tients with mar­gin­al zone lym­phoma of­ten achieve re­mis­sion af­ter ini­tial treat­ment — but many re­lapse.

Vinay Prasad, di­rec­tor of the FDA’s Cen­ter for Bi­o­log­ics Eval­u­a­tion and Re­search, said in a news re­lease that the ap­proval “rep­re­sents a ma­jor ad­vance­ment in pre­ci­sion med­i­cine.”

Lynelle Hoch, pres­i­dent of Bris­tol My­ers’ cell ther­a­py unit, cham­pi­oned the breadth of Breyanzi’s la­bel in a sep­a­rate an­nounce­ment. The new in­di­ca­tion is Breyanzi’s fifth can­cer ap­proval, cov­er­ing what Hoch called “the broad­est range of B-cell ma­lig­nan­cies,” com­pared with oth­er CAR-Ts.

In­side the two-week stretch that marked a re­ver­sal in bio­phar­ma sen­ti­ment.

Dur­ing the two weeks that our bio­phar­ma sen­ti­ment sur­vey was in the field in mid-Oc­to­ber, some­thing un­usu­al hap­pened: The mood of the in­dus­try ap­peared to snap out of its de­spair.

End­points Sig­nal sur­veyed more than 1,400 peo­ple for the Bio­phar­ma Sen­ti­ment In­dex (BP­SI) over that time. Com­ing in­to the sto­ry, many were still think­ing about 2025 as an­oth­er grind-it-out down year. At the start of our sur­vey, the sen­ti­ment read­ing hov­ered around 70, far be­low the neu­tral base­line of 100.

But over the next sev­er­al weeks, while the sur­vey was in the field, there was a sharp and con­sis­tent up­turn to­ward a much less neg­a­tive view­point.

A new biotech has raised $100 mil­lion to build a mix of as­sets from in­side and out­side Chi­na, while de­vel­op­ing its own drug can­di­dates.

The Shang­hai-based start­up, called OTR Ther­a­peu­tics, is a new twist on West­ern in­vestors that build new com­pa­nies around Chi­nese drug can­di­dates. The com­pa­ny wants to take ad­van­tage of the rapid de­vel­op­ment and clin­i­cal work avail­able in the re­gion, but with as­sets that can come from any­where.

That ap­proach has at­tract­ed a group of glob­al back­ers, in­clud­ing Pfiz­er Ven­tures, Lil­ly Asia Ven­tures, Temasek, True Light Cap­i­tal and Sirona Cap­i­tal.

OTR has al­ready ac­quired a pre­clin­i­cal neu­rol­o­gy drug can­di­date from an un­named Chi­nese biotech, CEO Zhui Chen said in a Fri­day morn­ing in­ter­view. And it's in late-stage dis­cus­sions about two or three oth­er as­sets to bring in.

The UK’s Na­tion­al In­sti­tute for Health and Care Ex­cel­lence (NICE) told stake­hold­ers this week that pre­vi­ous­ly re­ject­ed drugs won’t au­to­mat­i­cal­ly fall un­der its new cost-ef­fec­tive­ness thresh­old.

Fur­ther, med­i­cines cur­rent­ly un­der re­view that would now be cov­ered by the new £35,000 lim­it will have their de­ci­sions de­layed un­til April, ac­cord­ing to a Thurs­day email seen by End­points News.

Af­ter on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with the US gov­ern­ment, the UK an­nounced last week it was rais­ing its cost-ef­fec­tive­ness thresh­old for drugs by 25%. Cur­rent­ly, the up­per thresh­old lim­it is £30,000, but this will be raised to £35,000, mean­ing an ad­di­tion­al three to five drugs or la­bel ex­pan­sions will be rec­om­mend­ed per year.

It’s cur­rent­ly un­clear which drugs would ben­e­fit from this fu­ture up­date, but meet­ings are ex­pect­ed to be set af­ter April.