Pharma Pulse 7/21/25: Leveraging Real World Evidence to Enhance Safety Monitoring in Obesity Studies; Emrelis and the Evolving Landscape of Antibody Drug Conjugates

Leveraging Real World Evidence to Enhance Safety Monitoring in Obesity Studies

In an interview with Applied Clinical Trials, Shipra Patel, global therapeutic area section head for endocrinology and global head of pediatrics at Parexel, explained how the company is using real-world evidence to enhance safety monitoring and trial design in obesity studies—particularly for GLP-1 therapies—by identifying non-traditional patient populations and improving long-term engagement across a rapidly expanding and competitive therapeutic landscape.

Emrelis and the Evolving Landscape of Antibody Drug Conjugates

In an interview with Pharmaceutical Executive, Neha Anand, Analyst at Citeline’s Biopharma Intelligence Services, explained how AbbVie’s newly approved antibody drug conjugate, Emrelis, distinguishes itself through its biomarker-driven focus on MET-overexpressing non-small cell lung cancer, a unique microtubule-disrupting payload, and first-in-class status—signaling both a strategic shift for AbbVie in solid tumor oncology and broader FDA support for precision-targeted therapies.

Pharmacist’s Firing Raises Ethics, Safety, and Policy Questions

A pharmacist supervisor in North Carolina was terminated after publicly raising concerns about chronic understaffing and its impact on patient safety and staff burnout, prompting an ongoing legal case that highlights the ethical and legal tensions between pharmacists’ duty to prioritize patient well-being and employers’ claims of protecting proprietary information.

Interdisciplinary Grants Awarded for Cancer-Focused Engineering Projects

The Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, in partnership with its College of Engineering and clinical departments, awarded seven interdisciplinary grants through the BICEPS initiative to support innovative engineering projects aimed at advancing cancer detection and treatment, fostering collaboration between engineers and cancer specialists to accelerate transformative technologies that improve patient care.

The Ben Rush Project: A Hybrid AI System for Evidence-Based Clinical Decision Support in Psychiatry

The Ben Rush Project presents a conceptual framework for a hybrid AI-powered clinical decision support system in psychiatry, combining specialized psychiatric knowledge with broader medical expertise to help clinicians manage overwhelming volumes of information and deliver more comprehensive, evidence-based patient care while addressing key challenges in workflow integration, bias mitigation, and future regulatory validation.