Hired someone new and exciting? Promoted a rising star? Finally solved that hard-to-fill spot? Share the news with us, and we’ll share it with others. That’s right. Send us your changes, and we’ll find a home for them. Don’t be shy. Everyone wants to know who is coming and going. And here is our regular feature in which we highlight a different person each week. This time around, we note that Athira Pharma hired Javier San Martin as chief medical officer. Previously, he worked at Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals, where he was also chief medical officer. But all work and no play ca ..read more

And so, another working week will soon draw to a close. Not a moment too soon, yes? This is, you may recall, our treasured signal to daydream about weekend plans. Our agenda is still taking shape. However, we do foresee several naps in our future, if only to recover from promenading with the official mascots. We also hope to catch up on our reading and hold another listening party with Mrs. Pharmalot. The rotation will likely include this, this, this, this and this. And what about you? This is a fine time to enjoy the great outdoors — a walk in the woods, a stroll along city streets, or a day ..read more

Although U.S. regulators approved several new antibiotics for combating hard-to-treat bacteria during a recent five-year period, hospital doctors instead gave older, generic remedies to more than 40% of patients battling those stubborn pathogens, according to a new analysis. Moreover, 80% of the time these older antibiotics were already known to be highly toxic or ineffective, according to the analysis. And one-third of the hospitals where data were collected never used any of the new antibiotics. Notably, those hospitals tended to be smaller institutions located in rural areas or in urban set ..read more

WASHINGTON — A federal rule aiming to make reimbursement for breakthrough devices easier is slated for early summer, a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services official said on Thursday. The agency has faced intense pressure from device makers frustrated with the slow pace of Medicare reimbursement decisions. Medical technology lobby AdvaMed sent CMS a strongly-worded letter in March asking why it has taken so long to get the breakthrough device program moving. Dora Hughes, director of the clinical standards center at CMS, told attendees at the Medical Device Manufacturers’ Association ..read more

Every so often, the conversations that people in health care have become so pervasive that they dominate the zeitgeist, intersecting with mainstream media and popular culture. Oprah Winfrey’s recent ABC special “Shame, Blame, and the Weight Loss Revolution” is a good example of this. Now streaming on Hulu, the broadcast garnered widespread attention, including coverage from People Magazine and The New York Times. Oprah delved into her personal struggles with weight, placing her narrative against the broader backdrop of societal views on obesity. It’s a journey many people have shared with Opra ..read more

The Food and Drug Omnibus Reform Act of 2022 (FDORA), which was passed as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, will encourage greater diversity in clinical trials and help ensure new medications and treatments are developed with more representative populations in mind. But FDORA represents a paradigm shift for life sciences companies in the way individuals will be identified for clinical trials and enrolled in them, requiring companies to look closely at and rethink their current trial strategies. FDORA will require trial sponsors to include diversity action plans for Phase 3 a ..read more

In the chaotic first few months of the Covid-19 pandemic, stores faced shortages of all kinds — toilet paper, canned food, and especially, cleaning supplies. With everyone scrubbing their groceries, mail, even library books, good luck finding antibacterial wipes or disinfectant sprays back then. That’s because public health advice in early 2020 focused on sanitizing surfaces, not protecting against a virus that could be spread through the air. Much of that guidance could be traced back to the World Health Organization, which stated early on, and unequivocally, that Covid-19 was not an air ..read more

These days, the surefire way to get ahead in health insurance is to become a health care provider, and Elevance just upped the ante. It’s joining with private equity to launch a $4 billion primary care company. Elevance leaders divulged more about the company’s venture with Clayton, Dubilier & Rice on its first quarter earnings call Thursday. The partners announced the new company, yet unnamed, earlier this week, but the release was light on detail. The strategic partnership will house Elevance and CD&R’s doctors, clinics, and the technologies that help those doctors manage their patie ..read more

How does a startup compete with the likes of Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk in the rapidly evolving field of weight loss drugs? And how did a major telemedicine company fall flat after its pandemic-induced rise? We cover all that and more this week on “The Readout LOUD,” STAT’s biotech podcast. We bring on biotech veteran Clive Meanwell to discuss his new obesity startup, Metsera, and running head-to-head trials against Wegovy and Zepbound. We also dissect how Teledoc CEO Jason Gorevic parted ways with the company after spending 15 years building the telemedicine field. Read the rest ..read more

An ongoing investigation into data integrity at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has resulted in a string of retractions, the latest of which is a 2006 Science paper co-authored by institute president and CEO Laurie Glimcher. The retraction notice, published in Science on Thursday, noted that the authors had become aware of discrepancies in key scientific images that led them to lose confidence in key figures in the study, although the study’s lead author opposed the retraction. The issues with this paper, along with concerns with more than 50 other articles co-authored by four of Dana-Farber’s to ..read more