people moves
Flagship taps former Biden White House official
Speaking of Flagship, the firm has brought on Raj Panjabi, who had served as President Biden's top pandemic preparedness official on the White House National Security Council, my colleague Rachel Cohrs Zhang exclusively reports.
Panjabi was involved in the Covid-19 vaccination campaign, the mpox response, and pandemic preparedness. At Flagship, he'll join a team focused on preventative medicine that's been around for three years. In an interview, Panjabi said the Flagship group could grow under four main categories: preparing for infectious disease threats; delaying the onset of disease; biosecurity; and pursuing bolder early treatments for diseases with public health consequences like obesity, cancer, and neurodegenerative illnesses.
Read more.
pharma
Families devastated by Roche's move to cancel trial
Earlier this year, Roche abruptly canceled a Phase 2 trial of a drug studied in children with Dup15q syndrome, a rare genetic disorder characterized by developmental delays and intellectual disability. The company cited tradeoffs made "to increase the overall portfolio value."
"I was devastated. I felt blindsided," one neurologist said. Her patient, along with six other children, had already enrolled in the trial by the time it was terminated.
Doctors said they think Roche canceled the trial because it didn't want to invest any more money in a treatment with a relatively small market. "It felt like Roche was jerking families around," a principal investigator of the study said.
Read more in this exclusive story by STAT contributor Elizabeth Cohen.
biotech
Arie Belldegrun launches $600 million credit firm
Biotech mogul Arie Belldegrun raised more than $600 million for a new life sciences firm called Symbiotic Capital, which will provide loans to biotechs, medical device makers, and others.
It's the latest outpost of Belldegrun's vast empire. Over the last two decades, he's built and sold a variety of biotechs, including Kite Pharma, Allogene Therapeutics, and Cougar Biotechnology.
Read more from STAT's Allison DeAngelis.
health economics
North Carolina urges HHS to license GLP-1 drugs
North Carolina officials are calling on the Biden administration to negotiate licenses with the manufacturers of GLP-1 drugs so that more affordable alternatives can be made available, in the latest proposal to lower costs of the widely popular obesity and diabetes treatments.
This comes after North Carolina stopped covering earlier obesity drugs for its state employees last year. The state's treasurer said in a letter to HHS that the decision was forced by "corporate greed," and that the state plan "repeatedly" sought to negotiate a "fair price," but that every offer was rejected.
"These manufacturers are currently in a position of power and, if the plan covers their drugs, they intend to squeeze us to boost their corporate profits. This is a problem that needs a federal solution," the treasurer wrote.
Read more from STAT's Ed Silverman.
gene therapy
BioMarin restricts Roctavian sales, aiming for profitability
BioMarin said yesterday that it will restrict sales of its hemophilia A gene therapy to just three countries (the U.S., Germany, and Italy), in a restructuring intended to reduce costs and help the drug become profitable by next year.
The therapy, called Roctavian, has been a commercial flop due to the complexity of administering a gene therapy and the reluctance of patients to switch from very effective chronic treatments. Under the new marketing plan, the company anticipates reducing Roctavian-related expenses to $60 million per year by 2025 and for the therapy to become profitable by the end of 2025.
Read more from STAT's Adam Feuerstein.
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