Policy
Jim O’Neill was deputy secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services and also acting director of the CDC after the abrupt ouster of Susan Monarez in August 2025.
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Bristol Myers Squibb, GSK and Merck are contributing drug ingredients as part of their deals with the White House but are keeping many of the terms of their agreements private.
Some 200 rare disease therapies are at risk of losing eligibility for a pediatric priority review voucher, a recent analysis by the Rare Disease Company Coalition shows. That could mean $4 billion in missed revenue for already cash-strapped biotechs.
The FDA’s rare pediatric disease priority review voucher program missed reauthorization at the last minute in 2024; advocates have been fighting to get it back ever since.
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Regulatory challenges have been even more top of mind than usual given recent upheaval at the FDA. BioSpace spoke to three industry experts about key issues, which include applying new artificial intelligence guidance. The experts also shared advice for working with regulators.
Rep. Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts said the Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher program did not receive congressional backing. The FDA has also not yet made disclosures for eight senior reviewers, according to Auchincloss.
U.S. President Donald Trump signed a spending package into law Tuesday that reauthorizes the FDA’s previously stalled rare pediatric disease priority review voucher program, among other initiatives, while ending a three-day partial government shutdown.
In a Cabinet meeting, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the website could go live “probably in the next 10 days,” but an exact launch date remains unclear.
Nader Pourhassan, who led CytoDyn for nearly 10 years, was convicted in December 2024 of misleading investors regarding the biotech’s investigational COVID-19 and HIV drug, which artificially inflated its share price.
The $1.2 trillion budget package will now move to the Senate, which is expected to hold a vote next week.
“I don’t like established science,” ACIP chairperson Kirk Milhoan said in an interview on the Why Should I Trust You? podcast. “Science is what I observe.”
The U.S. regulator shared the roadmap for implementing the program, first proposed in August 2025, and teased changes made in response to industry feedback.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said that the main thing getting in the way of changing vaccine discussions in the U.S. is the Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Robert Kramer, former CEO of Emergent BioSolutions, allegedly earned more than $10.1 million by executing trades with information related to the company’s manufacturing operations that had yet to be made public.