Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
CEO: Biotech Is About Innovation Not 'Repricing Drugs From The 1950s To Make A Profit'
STAT: No Stranger To Gambling, This Biotech CEO Is Going All-In On A First Drug Approval
Biotech is a risky business, where roughly 90 percent of grand ideas fall flat and billion-dollar failures are commonplace. So it’s fitting that the industry’s self-appointed spokesman is the blackjack-playing CEO of a fast-growing company, one about to find out whether its futuristic science can make an actual product. John Maraganore is unafraid of the spotlight. The 53-year-old head of Kendall Square’s Alnylam Pharmaceuticals is a regular on CNBC, appearing on camera in his characteristic designer glasses and colorful suits. Mostly he talks about his company’s efforts to develop gene-silencing drugs, but he doesn’t hesitate to defend the virtues — and condemn the sins — of his whole industry, even though his company has yet to win marketing approval for a single product. Last year, when Martin Shkreli’s Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price of an old drug by more than 5,000 percent, Maraganore was one of the first biotech executives to castigate the move. (Garde, 5/5)
Marketplace: GlaxoSmithKline CEO On Why Drugs Cost So Much
GlaxoSmithKline is a British pharmaceutical company that's about the sixth largest in the industry. Sir Andrew Witty is the CEO. He's been with the company for 30 years and announced he would be retiring from the head post in 2017. Witty reflects on recent changes in industry and possible solutions. (Ryssdal, 5/10)
FiercePharma: 'Important Deals' On The Horizon For Gilead, New CEO Says
Gilead Sciences has said that it would only use its flush cash reserves for M&A if the right deal came along. Now, with a slowdown in the company’s hep C franchise and a new leader at the helm, it's getting more aggressive about its search. “It’s time for us to go out and do important deals,” CEO John Milligan told Bloomberg. “We need some other assets that can bolster our pipeline.” A new cancer product would be key, Milligan said, as Gilead looks to expand in cancer markets as well as liver diseases and inflammatory disorders. (Wasserman, 5/9)
CNBC: Sarepta Investor: High Drug Prices Are A Good Thing
If you can't charge "hundreds of thousands" of dollars a year for drugs, there will be no drugs for orphan diseases, Joe Edelman, Perceptive Advisors CEO, told CNBC's "Fast Money: Halftime Report." "I think high drug prices are actually good," Edelman said Thursday. "And the reason they're good is, let's say you have a disease. I'll use an example of Alzheimer's. Very risky to develop a drug. You want the reward to be great. ... You're not going to spend a billion dollars and take all these risks to charge the typical $10,000 a year on a drug." Edelman's firm manages $1.3 billion in assets and was the best performing hedge fund last year, seeing a return of more than 51 percent. (Balakrishnan, 5/5)
