Eisai’s success against Alzheimer’s was a long time coming

Ivan Cheung, chairman of Eisai’s U.S. operations (chantal heijnen for stat)

For the last two decades, when people wondered if there were any medications to treat Alzheimer’s, they might say, well, there’s Aricept. Approved in 1997, it raised hopes for its maker, Eisai, that a pipeline of other medicines would soon flow and improve on its modest benefits, including some drugs that might slow or even reverse the disease. Twenty-five years later, Eisai has lecanemab, which in September achieved the goals of a large clinical trial by slowing the cognitive decline of participants with Alzheimer’s better than a placebo.

The surprising success follows the disastrous rollout of Aduhelm from its longtime partner Biogen. In this report, Adam Feuerstein, Damian Garde, and Jason Mast tell us what was so different and what took so long.

In a Republican-led House, anti-science probes top the agenda

The Biden administration can look forward to a whole slew of Covid-19 investigations, after Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, my colleague Rachel Cohrs reports.

The new GOP majority will give House Republicans subpoena power over the Biden administration’s pandemic response, as well as the authority to drag public health officials before Congress. It also blunts Democrats’ ambitions to further their health care agenda under President Biden’s leadership, though their keeping the Senate will help ensure they can still move key nominations and protect certain officials from more extreme probes. Read more.

Looking for allies against menthol ban — in gas stations

Tobacco companies are deploying many ways to drum up opposition to the FDA’s controversial proposed ban of menthol and flavored tobacco products. One of them involves gas stations. Take the Gateway minimart in Gettysburg, Pa. A sign on the door warns consumers: “The FDA Is Trying To Ban Menthol Cigarettes and Flavored Cigars.” A QR code at the bottom of the poster takes you to the website for Citizens for Tobacco Rights, where you can submit a comment opposing the FDA’s April proposal.

The poster was paid for by Altria on behalf of Philip Morris and John Middleton, the makers of Black and Mild cigars. “We got about 250,000 comments — not a negligible amount — and the FDA goes through every single comment,” said FDA’s Brian King. STAT’s Nicholas Florko has more.

Separately, the FDA is formally warning multiple companies they must stop selling vapes and other products marketed to young people, including two that Nick highlighted in recent reporting on the industry: a vape holder made to look like a Game Boy, as he reported in August, and “Family Guy”-themed vapes on which STAT also reported Tuesday.

Closer look: In armadillos, leprosy expands healthy liver tissue. Could that tell us about humans?

(adobe)

Years ago, biologist Anura Rambukkana noticed something weird. When he infected cells with the bacteria that cause leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, they looked better than uninfected counterparts. The bug, it turned out, was reprogramming its host cells, turning them into shape-shifters, similar to the building blocks of the embryo before they get assigned a specific role.

But that was in a lab dish. Was that same sort of trick happening in an infected animal? He looked to armadillos, a natural host for Mycobacterium leprae — and this week, published a paper showing that the bug may be extending the size of the animals’ healthy liver tissue. His team saw no sign of scarring or cancer. To hepatologists, for whom spurring liver regeneration is a long-sought goal, the finding is exciting. But it’s hard to say how relevant it is for human livers. STAT’s Eric Boodman has more.

WHO, Uganda plan to test three candidate Ebola vaccines in outbreak

The first doses of three candidate Ebola vaccines should arrive in Uganda next week, part of a plan announced yesterday to test them during an outbreak that has been underway since at least early August. WHO and the government of Uganda, acting on the advice of experts convened by WHO, are responding after at least 163 confirmed and probable cases and 77 confirmed and probable deaths. Nine districts in Uganda have reported cases.

The two Ebola vaccines that have already been licensed protect against another species of ebolavirus (Zaire) so they are not effective against the Sudan species circulating in this outbreak. A number of laboratories have designed Ebola Sudan vaccines over the past couple of decades but this type of Ebola crops up rarely — the last outbreak was in 2012 — providing no chances until now to test vaccines. STAT’s Helen Branswell has more.

STAT Summit: What's next?

This week's STAT Summit brought CEOs' thoughts on the next pandemic, on measuring mental health, and on drug pricing reform' effect on R&D.

Kathrin Jansen, who recently retired as head of vaccine R&D at Pfizer, on the next thing: “Before SARS-CoV-2, we had worried about pandemic flu. And just because corona came first doesn’t mean flu is just sitting there." An influenza-based pandemic is only a matter of time, Jansen added: “The question is, does it come tomorrow or 50 years from now?”

David Mou, CEO of online mental health company Cerebral, on a lack of standardization in behavioral health practices: “This is a big problem with the field of mental health, but we don’t have a gold standard metric. It’s not like diabetes where we have a hemoglobin A1C and all the clinicians can agree that that is the standard.”

Vertex CEO Reshma Kewalramani on whether drug pricing reforms passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act will have a chilling effect on innovation: “Our approach in general to [research and development] is this disease-first approach. And I don’t see us changing that.”

What to read around the web today

Lilly CEO concedes Twitter flap over insulin costs shows there’s ‘more work to do,’ STAT
A lab-grown meat startup gets the FDA’s stamp of approval, Wired
The player-coaches of addiction recovery work without boundaries, Kaiser Health News
Deforestation brings bat-borne virus home to roost, New York Times
Thrive founders launch new blood testing startup to spot when cancer returns, STAT