Pharmaceutical

With Flublok at a standstill in Japan, Astellas ditches collaborator UMN Pharma After Japanese regulators turned away the partners’ submission for a new cell-culture flu vaccine, Astellas has pulled the plug on a collaboration with UMN Pharma. UMN said it’s “regrettable” the companies can no longer work together to push the vaccine, Protein Sciences’ Flublok, to the market in Japan. The pharmas first linked up back in 2010. The shot had previously met its endpoints in a phase 3 trial, according to a release from UMN, and development partner Astellas submitted a marketing application to Japanese health authorities in May 2014. The Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Age...