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New guidelines from two leading medical associations suggest that efforts to reduce bad cholesterol should focus on maintaining low levels of two key lipoproteins. Big pharma is all in, looking to improve on the standard statins to help vanquish America’s number one killer: heart disease.
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The Department of Health and Human Services is spinning its wheels, unable to establish steady leadership at three major divisions—the CDC and the FDA’s two primary review units.
FDA
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s health department has consistently touted radical transparency as being key to its mission. Recent instances—the FDA’s decision not to disclose the recipients of three Commissioner’s National Priority Vouchers and FDA and CDC choices not to publish vaccine-related papers—call this intent into question.
In Salt Lake City, biotech founders new and seasoned reflect on ways to ride out the industry’s challenges, such as sending cold emails to investors and learning to address leadership weaknesses.
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A combination of Merck’s Keytruda and Pfizer’s Padcev could offer a chemotherapy-free treatment alternative for patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer, even those eligible for cisplatin treatment.
On the FDA’s docket this month are two decisions pushed back from 2025, including one for a rare form of obesity and another for dry eye disease.
The CDC’s changes threaten to cut vaccine sales for makers including Pfizer, Moderna, Merck and more, but a legal expert suspects affected manufacturers will stay on the sidelines rather than back a push to declare the revised schedule unlawful.
This week’s Capitol Hill meetings come on the heels of rejections of ultra-rare disease drugs developed by Biohaven and Saol Therapeutics. Physicians and patient groups implored the FDA to expedite these treatments.
FDA
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary presented a new idea to staff this week: bonus payments for employees that complete regulatory review processes faster than expected.
Hernexeos is the second drug to secure an FDA approval under the agency’s priority voucher scheme, following in the footsteps of USAntibiotics’ Augmentin XR, which was granted the ticket in December 2025.
FDA
Aside from creating a toxic work environment, CBER Director Vinay Prasad has also been accused of berating his staff and retaliating against reviewers who questioned his decisions.
Without naming a specific product, Commissioner Marty Makary referred to an investigational therapy, delivered surgically into the brain, that the FDA was “pressured” to approve even after finding no clinical benefit to patients.
The BioSpace team hit the ground running at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference earlier this month to bring you the news from the streets of San Francisco.
After a rocky 2025, Sarepta Therapeutics’ executives admit they have work to do to bring patients back into the fold as sales of Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene therapy Elevidys continue to decline.