Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
FDA Approves Drug To Slow Progeria
NPR: FDA Approves A Drug For A Rare Disease That Causes Children To Age Quickly
The Food and Drug Administration has approved a drug that extends the lives of children with an extremely rare genetic disorder that causes them to grow old before they grow up. The disorder, progeria, ages cells rapidly and prematurely. As a result, affected children remain small and begin to look frail and old by the time they reach school age. Most die of heart disease in their early teens. But the drug, Zokinvy, slows down the decline. (Hamilton, 11/23)
In other pharmaceutical and biotech news —
Stat: Merck To Pay $425M For Biotech To Get Covid-19 Drug
The drug giant Merck said Monday it would purchase Rockville, Md.-based OncoImmune for $425 million in cash to obtain the company’s treatment for patients hospitalized with severe and critical Covid-19. In an interview with STAT, Merck’s head of research and development, Roger Perlmutter, said that clinical trials for the treatment, CD24Fc, were encouraging but that manufacturing could prove a challenge. Still, he said, he hopes that, if proven safe and effective, it will be possible to make the medicine in useful quantities in the first half of 2021. (Herper, 11/23)
Bloomberg: CVS Health Taps Retail Veteran to Lead Its Pharmacy Business
CVS Health Corp. named former Crate & Barrel Chief Executive Officer Neela Montgomery as president of its CVS Pharmacy unit, tapping new leadership for its drugstore business as online shopping and Covid-19 reshape the industry. Montgomery will oversee CVS’s roughly 10,000 drugstores in the U.S. at a time when people are buying more convenience items online and the coronavirus pandemic is introducing more patients to ordering prescription medicines the same way. (LaVito, 11/23)
Stat: VC Raises $800M For Company Aiming To Transform Biotech Manufacturing
In March, as waves of Covid-19 cases began surging across the U.S., biotech venture capitalist Robert Nelsen was “pissed off” about his prescient fear that new biotech treatments, even if they emerged, would not be able to be manufactured in sufficient amounts. As usual, Nelsen’s rage resulted in a new company: Resilience, backed by $800 million from Nelsen’s ARCH Venture Partners, 8VC, and other sources, and aimed at transforming manufacturing. The company’s board includes a who’s who of former industry and government officials. (Herper and Garde, 11/23)
