European Officials Target Merck For Predatory Pricing

Stat: Merck Reaches Deal With Regulators Over 'Predatory' Pricing For Cancer Drug
Following a three-year probe, Merck (MRK) reached a deal with Austrian regulators to end a “predatory” pricing strategy for a brain cancer treatment, the latest instance in which European authorities have scrutinized the pharmaceutical industry over anticompetitive practices. The focus of the investigation was Temodal, which is used to treat such brain tumors as glioblastoma, the most frequent type of brain tumor in adults. Approximately 350 people develop this malady in Austria each year, but the Federal Competition Authority determined the company was making it difficult for lower-cost generic versions to reach the market. (Silverman, 4/7)

NPR: New Drugs To Treat COVID-19 Show Promise, Researchers Say
Researchers are reporting some progress in their search for drugs that tamp down the overwhelming immune reaction that can kill a patient with COVID-19. These reactions are triggered by coronavirus infections and can veer out of control in some people. It's this reaction, rather than the virus itself, that is the real peril for people seriously ill with COVID-19. Doctors last year recognized that a cheap and readily available steroid drug called dexamethasone can often rein in this overreaction, which is a form of inflammation. In fact, it's the only COVID-19 drug so far that clearly saves lives. (Harris, 4/7)

Stat: How The Pandemic Helped Build A Burgeoning Home Testing Industry
Just a few years ago, the idea of at-home testing was practically antithetical to Caesar Djavaherian’s mission. The clinician and founder was laser-focused on serving people in person with his network of urgent care clinics. Fast forward to the spring of 2020, and his company — fresh off the heels of a merger with Carbon Health — was dashing to offer one of the first at-home test kits for Covid-19. (Brodwin, 4/8)

In research and biotech news —

KQED: JAMA And Other Medical Journals Under Fire After Disastrous Podcast On Racism In Medicine
Weeks after it was scrubbed from the Journal of the American Medical Association's website, a disastrous podcast — whose host, a white editor and physician, questioned whether racism even exists in medicine — is surfacing complaints that JAMA and other elite medical journals have routinely excluded, minimized, and mishandled issues of race. Recent examples include research blaming higher death rates from COVID-19 in African Americans on a single gene in their nasal passages; a letter claiming structural racism doesn’t play a role in pulse oximeters working less well on patients with dark skin because machines can't exhibit bias; and an article claiming that students of programs designed to increase diversity in medicine won’t make good doctors. (Lee McFarling, 4/7)

Stat: How Artificial Intelligence Could Make Clinical Trials Smarter
Clinical trials have a dirty little secret. For all the careful work that goes into randomizing and blinding participants just so, the criteria that determine who can enter a trial can be unexpectedly arbitrary. Patients can be nixed because of age, lab values, medication history, and a laundry list of other factors that may not always be necessary. (Palmer, 4/7)

Axios: Health Care Leads The Way For Top Private AI Firms 
A new list of the top 100 private AI companies shows that health is driving investment in the industry. COVID-19 has shown the power and potential of AI applications for health, and the growth of the field will continue long after the pandemic has finally ended. (Walsh, 4/7)

Stat: MIT Biologist On New Initiative To Address Gender Inequities In Biotech
When Nancy Hopkins joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology nearly 50 years ago, she didn’t think that her gender would have any impact on her career. “I was a person who thought that there really were no issues left for women to worry about in academia, once they were able to get jobs,” she said. But when she saw male colleagues receiving better treatment and more opportunities, she began to understand that a “strange undervaluation of women” was shaping her career and the careers of her female colleagues. (Sohn, 4/7)