Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Unique Aspects Of New Pricey CAR-T Cancer Therapy Flummox Medicare Advisers
Stat: Medicare Struggles To Set The Agenda As It Considers How To Pay For CAR-T
Medicare can’t seem to figure out how to pay for pricey CAR-T cancer therapies. The latest glaring example of the struggle? A daylong advisory meeting Wednesday in Baltimore, ostensibly convened to discuss how patient-reported data should fit into the way Medicare pays for the pricey therapies, devolved into a confusing debate about what the meeting was supposed to be about in the first place. (Swetlitz, 8/23)
Stat: A Rare Spotlight On The Chemists Working To Develop New Drugs
For a few hours on Wednesday, the most exciting thing in drug development wasn’t the patients or potential payoffs. Instead, it was all about the chemists. Scientists from Merck, Eli Lilly, Amgen, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline were providing a detailed look at their preclinical development programs at the American Chemical Society’s annual meeting in Boston, disclosing information about what their drug candidates look like and how the structures are built, chemically speaking. (Sheridan, 8/23)
Stat: Chemists Aim To Develop A New Class Of Antimalarials
Researchers on Wednesday unveiled the chemical structure of what could become the first in a new class of drugs to treat malaria. It’s an early but promising step in the effort to find new ways to treat the mosquito-borne blood disease. Two of the common parasites behind the disease are increasingly developing a resistance to the antibiotics typically prescribed as treatment. Finding drugs that work in completely new ways will be critical to meeting a global goal of reducing the number of people infected with malaria by 90 percent by 2030. (Sheridan, 8/23)
