politics
Medical groups sue RFK Jr. over vaccine changes
Six major medical groups and a pregnant doctor are suing health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over changes he made to Covid-19 vaccine recommendations.
The suit, led by the American Academy of Pediatrics, centers around a May directive by Kennedy, which said that the vaccines would no longer be recommended for healthy children and pregnant people. The groups argue that this action violated decades of policy governing how vaccines are approved and recommended in the U.S.
The directive puts doctors "in the untenable position of telling their patients that the country's top-ranking government health official's advice and recommendations are wrong and that we are right. This erodes trust," the suit reads.
Read more from STAT's Chelsea Cirruzzo.
gene therapy
Beam buys a mystery startup
From my colleague Jason Mast: Beam Therapeutics, the gene-editing company, has bought a private startup for just under $7 million in stock, plus another $89 million in potential milestone payments. That deal would hardly be notable except, in an unusual move, Beam opted not to name the company it acquired, referring to it only as an "early stage life sciences company" in SEC filings.
It's one of the only acquisitions Beam has made in the eight years since it launched to develop a new form of gene editing to change individual letters of DNA. The only other buyout of note was Guide Therapeutics, a delivery company it purchased for $120 million in stock in 2021, when a gene-editing boom sent its share price soaring. That buyout has seemingly yielded little for the company.
The gene-editing field, which has been struggling financially for the last two years, is currently trying to tackle two major bottlenecks: developing new delivery vehicles to edit specific, hard-to-reach cell types and developing new gene editors capable of making larger changes to the genome. What Beam's new acquisition focused on is anyone's guess. A spokesperson for the company declined to comment.
immunology
Cogent's immune drug worked, but it's difficult to size up
Cogent Biosciences reported yesterday that its experimental drug reduced the symptoms of a chronic immune disorder called indolent systemic mastocytosis. Its drug, called bezuclastinib, led to a nine-point greater difference in a score of patients' symptoms compared with placebo.
But patients in Cogent's study had more severe disease at baseline than those in Blueprint's study. That difference that could have provided bezuclastinib a boost and makes comparisons between the two drugs more difficult.
Nevertheless, investors were encouraged by the data, sending Cogent's stock up over 20% yesterday.
Read more from STAT's Adam Feuerstein.
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