Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Walgreens Sells Drug Wholesale Business To AmerisourceBergen
AP: Walgreens To Sell Drug Wholesale Business For $6.5B
Walgreens Boots Alliance will sell its pharmaceutical wholesale business to AmerisourceBergen in a $6.5 billion cash and stock deal. Pharmaceutical wholesalers essentially act as middlemen, purchasing drugs from manufacturers and then distributing them to customers like drugstore chains, hospitals and doctor’s offices. (Murphy, 1/6)
In other pharmaceutical and research news —
Stat: Generic Drug Makers Fear A 'Skinny Labeling' Court Ruling Will Pose A Huge Threat
An arcane regulatory term known as skinny labeling may have a funny ring to it, but to generic drug makers, it is no laughing matter. What has the generic industry upset is a recent court ruling that, legal experts say, could effectively negate a key aspect of a decades-old law which makes it possible to supply Americans with many of cheaper generic alternatives to pricey brand-name medicines. (Silverman, 1/7)
Stat: CRISPR Cures Progeria In Mice, Raising Hope For One-Time Therapy
Biologists tend not to discuss experimental results on a handful of cells and a single solitary mouse — too preliminary, too sketchy. David Liu of the Broad Institute therefore had no plans to present such findings, which he’d peeked at over his graduate student’s shoulder, when he gave a high-profile talk in 2018 at the National Institutes of Health on a form of the CRISPR genome-editing system that he’d invented. (Begley, 1/6)
Stat: Siddhartha Mukherjee Forms A Second Cell Therapy Company
Almost five years after debuting his first biotech company, noted writer and oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee has officially unveiled his second: Myeloid Therapeutics. The new company, based in Cambridge, Mass., launched Wednesday with a $50 million Series A. (Sheridan, 1/6)
