| |   By Elizabeth Cooney | Good morning. Lots happening this week in San Francisco in the worlds of biotech, health care, and insurance. Read on, and make sure you subscribe to STAT's biotech newsletter, The Readout, for more "JPM Week" news. | | | What’s on biotech insiders’ minds as J.P. Morgan conference returns  (MIKE REDDY FOR STAT) You’d think a return to the global biotech industry’s biggest annual event would be glorious after a two-year pandemic pause. You’d be wrong, or at least among the minority of executives polled by STAT about the year ahead. Asked on the eve of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, nearly 70% of respondents said financing — raising venture capital, launching an IPO, or selling additional stock to further fund R&D and other operations — will face a headwind in 2023.
“I’m assuming that it’s going to suck,” said ARCH Venture Partners co-founder Bob Nelsen, who’s not throwing his usual big party during JPM Week. But STAT’s survey does show optimism for science and innovation, with 40% predicting R&D productivity will be a positive tailwind for 2023. Read more views here on the Inflation Reduction Act, stocks, and M&A. And here are the health care providers and insurers to watch at JPM23. | FDA approves a new Alzheimer’s drug with modest benefits in early disease. Is it worth the price? The Alzheimer’s drug decision we’ve been waiting for has come. The FDA granted accelerated approval on Friday to Leqembi, the treatment known as lecanemab that moderately slows cognitive decline in people with early-stage disease. It was developed by Eisai, the Japanese pharmaceutical company that also developed the first symptomatic treatment for Alzheimer’s 25 years ago.
However, Leqembi also carries some risks for swelling and bleeding in the brain that will require monitoring. The company said Leqembi will cost $26,500 per year for a person of average weight, giving it the potential to be a commercial blockbuster, but only if Medicare can be convinced to pay for it. Read more here from STAT’s Adam Feuerstein on the approval and more here from STAT’s Ed Silverman, who asked experts if the drug is worth the price. | Nebraska, South Dakota, and Oklahoma are looking into how prisons treat hepatitis C Last month we highlighted a two-year investigation by STAT’s Nicholas Florko into the deaths of more than 1,000 people incarcerated in state prisons of hepatitis C-related complications in the six years after curative drugs hit the market. States around the country continue to ration these curative drugs to a fraction of their prison population through policies saying most incarcerated people with the virus are ineligible for treatment.
Now, three states are responding. In South Dakota and Oklahoma, lawmakers have written to their respective departments of corrections about STAT’s reporting. In Nebraska, the state’s inspector general of corrections requested that the prison explain a policy, obtained by STAT, requiring that incarcerated people sign a consent form that misrepresents the benefits of available hepatitis C treatments. Lawmakers in other states are pledging broader probes into the issue, too. Nick has more here. | You’re invited to STAT’s JPM Recap On Jan. 13, get a full rundown of the deals, data, and scuttlebutt from the STAT reporters who attended the conference, and come away with insights you won’t get anywhere else. Sign up here. | Closer look: A writer gives voice to long Covid  (PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: CASEY SHENERY FOR STAT) In her latest “Living With” post about the contours of chronic illness, STAT’s Isabella Cueto talks with Kristin Houlihan, a writer in Northern California who, after two years of declining health, was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, myalgic encephalomyelitis, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, and long Covid.
What does managing those conditions look like?
It’s meant finding my baseline level of activity — staying in bed — and avoiding mental, physical, and emotional overexertion.
How has it been for you learning to write about being unwell?
I don’t think I’ll ever feel like I’ve figured it out, but I’ll keep experimenting as long as it helps me cope, and keep sharing as long as my messages continue to touch people. [Myalgic encephalomyelitis] and long Covid are often described as invisible illnesses, and I feel compelled to bring the experiences of sufferers out into the world. I want people to see us.
Read the full interview. | Why were abortion pills approved with restrictions? Now that the FDA has lifted some — but not all — restrictions on an abortion pill, have you wondered why these rules were there in the first place? STAT’s Eric Boodman did. He asked Jane Henney, who was the FDA commissioner when mifepristone was approved in 2000, why the medication landed on a list of prescription drugs requiring extra precautions and red tape, alongside opioid painkillers.
Those rules loosened a bit during the pandemic, when the FDA stopped requiring that mifepristone be prescribed in-person, a change now permanent. The restrictions stem in part from the provenance of the data that the FDA reviewed in 2000. It came from France, where health care is very different from the American system. “It’s taken longer, quite frankly, than I thought it would,” Henney said about last week’s rules change allowing retail pharmacies to dispense the drug. Read more. | To understand whether telehealth drives up costs, look at mental health Here’s a question prompted by the pandemic surge in telehealth: Does the convenience drive up costs when patients make more appointments than they would in-person? The answer could shape investments in — and oversight of — the fast-growing field. Three years in, the answer depends on where you look, leaving regulators, insurers, researchers, and health systems with a newfound recognition that virtual care might drive up visits and costs for some specialities and not others.
Mental health visits, for instance, may have increased early in the pandemic — a sign that telehealth enabled people who needed behavioral health care to get it more easily, RAND policy researcher Ryan McBain, who led a study on the subject published Friday in JAMA Health Forum, told STAT’s Mohana Ravindranath. “I would generally expect this to be a good thing: More people are seeking care to address their needs.” Read more. | | | | | What we're reading - Opinion: Grant Wahl was a loving husband. I will always protect his legacy, New York Times
- Seattle's schools are suing tech giants for harming young people's mental health, NPR
- 71-year-old cancer patient broke trial age limits for a chance at a cure, Wall Street Journal
- Day One says drug shrinks tumors in common pediatric brain cancer, setting up potential approval, STAT
- Opinion: The coronavirus is speaking. It’s saying it’s not done with us, Washington Post
- India’s lax oversight of pharmaceutical manufacturing imperils health around the world, STAT
| Thanks for reading! More tomorrow,  | | | | Have a news tip or comment? Email Me | | | | | | | | Kendall Square February 9 | | | | | | | |
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