The Open Payments database only collects information about financial relationships between physicians and teaching hospitals and industry, but many prescribers are nurse practitioners and physician assistants, ProPublica reported. The investigative news organization found that 15% of all prescriptions were written by those types of providers in the first five months of this year. Groups like the Pew Charitable Trusts are advocating that payments to nurse practitioners and physician assistants should also be disclosed.

Horizon Pharma announced another acquisition, saying Tuesday that it plans to buy Depomed for $3 billion. But Depomed’s board of directors and management have rejected Horizon’s advances, according to the Irish drugmaker, which is why it is taking the offer to Depomed’s shareholders. Horizon, which focuses on developing products that treat rare diseases, this year acquired Hyperion Therapeutics. Depomed makes specialty drugs that treat pain and central nervous system disorders.

Retrophin, which develops drugs that treat rare diseases, said the agreement to sell its rare pediatric disease priority-review voucher to Sanofi closed. Sanofi will pay Retrophin $245 million over three years. The FDA awards transferable priority-review vouchers to encourage development of drugs for rare diseases. Sanofi spent $67.5 million to buy a priority-review voucher from BioMarin last year.

 

Teva reportedly plans to raise its bid to $43 billion to buy generic drugmaker Mylan, according to Bloomberg Business. The Israeli drugmaker first offered to acquire Mylan in April, but Mylan is seeking to make its own deal and is pursuing a takeover of Perrigo Co. Bloomberg Business said this recent bid by Teva would make it the largest deal in the drug industry so far this year.

Adverse reactions to prescription medications kill 2,400 people in the US each week, according to a blog post on the Health Affairs website. The FDA’s approval system incentivizes development of “clinically inconsequential” new drugs or “me-too” versions of existing drugs, and changing that system could bring safer and more effective drugs to market, Donald Light argued.