Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Drugmakers 'Not Being Fair To The Consumer,' Trump Accuses As Pharma Goes Back To Status Quo On Raising Prices
Bloomberg: Trump Goes After Pharma On Twitter As Companies Increase Prices
Just as the pharmaceutical industry’s biggest conference of the year is set to get under way, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to complain that drugmakers aren’t “living up to their commitments on pricing.” Despite talk about halting increases and lowering the price on some treatments, pharmaceutical companies on Jan. 1 returned to the practice of regular price hikes on hundreds of drugs. The average increase was 6.7 percent, according to data analyzed by Bloomberg. (Edney, 1/5)
Stat: A Year After 'The Michaels,' More Women Will Take The JPM Stage
A year after STAT found more men named Michael than female CEOs giving corporate presentations at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, the tables have turned: At next week’s confab, there will be 33 female CEOs presenting corporate updates, compared to 19 men named Michael. And yet women will still be massively outnumbered on one of biotech’s biggest stages: Men represent 90 percent of the 553 executives who will give corporate presentations at JPM. That’s down from 94 percent last year. (Robbins, 1/5)
And in other pharmaceutical news —
Stat: Microbiome Startup Vedanta Eyes Large-Scale Clinical Trials
Hundreds of millions of dollars have flowed to Boston-area companies investigating how to manipulate the microbiome within everyone to treat a plethora of illnesses, from serious gastrointestinal infections to food allergies to cancer. The latest addition to that figure is $27 million to Vedanta Biosciences, which announced its Series C round on Dec. 24. The company has raised $82 million since it launched in 2010, making it one of the best-funded private companies working on microbiome therapeutics in the area. It also announced a partnership with Bristol-Myers Squibb in December. (Sheridan, 1/4)
San Francisco Chronicle: Biotech Firm Grail Conducting Large Study For Early Breast Cancer Detection
Dr. Harriet Borofsky, a radiologist and medical director at one of the Bay Area’s largest breast imaging centers, is always on the lookout for technology to improve breast cancer screenings. She is so hopeful about one such technology — a blood test made by biotech startup Grail Inc. that seeks to detect cancer early — that she recently joined her patients in signing up for a study to test its effectiveness. (Ho, 1/6)
