What happens when a common virus jumps from birds to cows? And should we be concerned? This week on “The Readout LOUD,” STAT senior infectious diseases reporter Helen Branswell walks us through ongoing H5N1 outbreak in the U.S. and issues with monitoring the spread. Read the rest ..read more

Exact Sciences reported first-quarter revenues this week that beat market expectations, and the cancer detection company’s executives still believe they’re on track to meet expected 2024 revenue. That’s usually good news. Yet Exact shares are down nearly 11% on Thursday, dipping to $53.12 within the first few hours of trading. During after-hours trading on Wednesday, shortly after Exact released its financial updates, shares tumbled as low as $47.24. Read the rest ..read more

BALTIMORE — Gene and cell therapies have transformed a handful of devastating disorders in the U.S. and Europe, with more treatments on the way. But those technologies have largely failed to reach most of the world. These lags are ubiquitous in the current drug development system, where new therapies are approved in wealthy countries and then slowly leak out to low- and middle-income countries, many years later. In the case of gene therapy, that means countries most affected by a disease such as sickle cell may wait decades to access a curative therapy. Read the rest ..read more

You’re reading the web edition of D.C. Diagnosis, STAT’s twice-weekly newsletter about the politics and policy of health and medicine. Sign up here to receive it in your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Ways & Means strikes first Yesterday, leaders of the House Ways & Means Committee passed a two-year extension of expiring Medicare telehealth provisions with a major, unanimous 41-0 vote. And importantly for the health care industry, my colleague Mario Aguilar and I wrote, they’re looking to PBM regulations to pay for the extension. There was a telling exchange during the mark ..read more

Even with the recent awareness that clinical trials often lack the diversity that would make them representative, women and people of color remain underrepresented in studies. The work of bringing diversity to research is complex, and several experts gathered at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Wednesday to discuss potential strategies to make progress, starting with ways to build trust among the communities that have a history of being mistreated or exploited by the scientific community. Here are some of their big ideas. Take the time to build trust “What it’s going to take is to con ..read more

This is the online edition of Adam’s Biotech Scorecard, a new subscriber-only newsletter. STAT+ subscribers can sign up here to get it delivered every Thursday to their inbox. I love the Cytokinetics story. There’s so much at stake with aficamten, not to mention all the ups and downs from previous drug-development efforts and now the speculation about a possible takeover. That’s why I invited CEO Robert Blum to sit down with me for a fireside chat at the STAT Breakthrough Summit West in San Francisco on May 16. Blum and I are going to get into it. I promise this will be a fun and eng ..read more

Rise and shine, everyone, another busy day is on the way. We can tell because countless birds are chirping outside our window, the pace of motor vehicles passing by our window is picking up, and the official mascots are busy foraging for snacks on the official grounds. As for us, we are engaged in the usual ritual of brewing cups of stimulation. Our choice today is orange cream. As always, you are invited to join us. Meanwhile, here is the latest menu of tidbits for you to digest as you embark on your journey, which we hope is satisfying and rewarding. On that note, time to get cracking. Best ..read more

U.S. legislation that would sever ties with Chinese drugmakers would jeopardize the drug supply for millions of American patients if it’s passed, the biotechnology industry’s main trade group has told Congress. Congress is considering legislation, called the BIOSECURE Act, that would make it difficult for Chinese contract development and manufacturing organizations to do business with biotechnology companies that work with the U.S. federal government. Biotechs hire Chinese CDMOs, as they’re often called, for services that include product manufacturing, development, formulation, packaging, and ..read more

A host of hurdles are slowing the adoption of the new Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi, experts involved in the treatment of patients said Wednesday, from complicated logistics to the fact that many people don’t recognize that their memory loss is a disease soon enough. Some patients still grapple with whether they want to be diagnosed, even though a treatment exists, the experts said, speaking during a STAT virtual event. “Even the word for dementia does not always exist in every culture and in every language,” said Hollis Day, chief of geriatrics at Boston Medical Center and a professor at Boston Un ..read more

Twenty-seven years ago today, a 3-year-old boy in Hong Kong developed a sore throat, spiked a fever, and started to cough. Six days later, he was hospitalized; six days after that, he died of acute respiratory distress caused by viral pneumonia. Testing showed the toddler, who’d had contact with sick chickens before becoming ill, had been infected with H5N1 bird flu. His death was the first attributed to a bird flu virus, and since then, dozens more young children across a number of countries have died from this bird flu virus, H5N1. In fact, in the weeks that followed the boy’s death, 17 othe ..read more