UnitedHealth Ends Spread Pricing, Signals PBM Reform
Optum Rx/UnitedHealth says its ending "spread pricing" in its PBM, after years of criticism, @ShelbyJLiv reports for @endpts This is a big change in PBM policy, as PBMs face pressure to reform some of the practices they've faced scrutiny over: https://t.co/jq4FmvrO9C
Dog Drug Flavor Loved, but Owners Smell Vomit
from the trenches of dog drug development: last week we had to change the flavoring in one of our drugs because, while the dogs LOVE it, to dog owners it smells like ........ vomit
LQDA’s Soaring Market Share Proves Drug Superiority
$LQDA "Market share has gone from 10% to 16% to 23% across past 3 quarters" That doesn't happen against an entrenched competitor unless the drug is truly better.
GLP‑1 Drugs Boost Survival, Cut Recurrence in Obese Breast Cancer Patients
In women with breast cancer and obesity or T2 diabetes, a large propensity matching retrospective analysis reports association of GLP-1 drug therapy with improved survival and reduced risk of recurrence https://t.co/GjimCr97S0
GNPS2 Enables Comprehensive Drug Metabolism Toolkit
Nature Protocols: A versatile toolkit for drug metabolism studies with GNPS2: from drug development to clinical monitoring https://t.co/lEejrO6gXT https://t.co/qlybcRgD9V
Fractyl Secures Dutch CTA for First GLP‑1 Gene Therapy Trial
Fractyl Health today announced that it has received Clinical Trial Application (CTA) authorization in the Netherlands to initiate the Phase 1/2 first-in-human study of RJVA-001 - $GUTS first clinical candidate from its Rejuva 🧵👇 GLP-1 Gene Therapy platform and the...
Beware Payer Panic; GLP‑1 Drugs Defy Bankruptcy Predictions
This is a reminder: when payers warn a new class of drugs will bankrupt a system, be cautious. We saw this with PCSK9 cholesterol meds, and then with Alzheimer's drugs. Unless of course that class of drugs begins with G and...
Rare Disease Community Gains New Treatment Hope After Five Years
Five years after disaster, a rare disease community gets new chance at treatment Yet another heart-rending story from @Jasonmmast. https://t.co/9vgOKpInL3
POD24 Signals Urgent Need for Wise Management
POD24 in follicular lymphoma: time to be “wise” [Mar 17, 2022] @JohnPLeonardMD @BloodJournal https://t.co/jLMd14D4Ur #lymsm https://t.co/991dNQe3JH
Zoledronic Acid Prevents Bone Loss in Lymphoma Therapy
Zoledronic Acid for Prevention of Bone Loss in Patients Receiving Primary Therapy for Lymphomas: A Prospective, Randomized Controlled Phase III Trial [Dec 29, 2012] @Lymphoma_Doc @mtmdphd et al. CLML https://t.co/iPOYSXEA1M #lymsm #SuppOnc #BoneHealth #NCT00352846 https://t.co/UlaqHyy65d
GLP‑1 Cash‑pay Users Set to Triple by 2030
In its initiation on $HIMS, The J.P. Morgan healthcare team estimates the long term GLP-1 cash pay addressable market to be over 120M individuals in the US, with only ~3M of those currently utilizing compounded or branded GLP-1s (~2.5% penetration)....
New Patent Covers Short-Acting Monoamine Releasers
Short-acting monoamine releasers D Nutt, A Borthwick, R Tyacke - US Patent 12,590,077, 2026 https://t.co/P99hvyXiil
Underpowered Trial Misleads: Non‑significant Trend, Not Failure
One of my pet peeves is a headline saying "This trial showed drug X doesn't work in condition Y" when in actuality what was demonstrated was a non-significant trend to efficacy in a severely underpowered trial.
MANE Secures Patent, Launches Trials to Address Minoxidil
Turns out I was dead wrong in this thread from some four years back. $MANE managed to get a patent (US 12,268,688 ) and is conducting full-scale trials to assuage the obvious safety concerns with the approved Minoxidil oral dose.
Ozempic Mainly Reduces Lean Mass, Not Skeletal Muscle
How much “muscle” are people actually losing on Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs? The first thing to understand: Lean mass is not the same thing as skeletal muscle mass. That distinction matters.
AlphaFold Predicted Billions of Proteins in Just One Month
Still incredible that the DeepMind documentary has footage of exact moment Demis is told that AlphaFold can “easily” predict all known (1-2B) protein sequences “in a month” and he says to do it. Then, it shows the moment AlphaFold is...
Upcoming Meeting to Shape Gerotherapeutic Regulatory Frameworks
Affecting the Aging Trajectory: Regulatory Constructs for Gerotherapeutic Drug, Biologic & Device Development 👉 “On May 27, 2026, the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA, in collaboration with @ARPA_H and the @xprize Foundation, will convene a hybrid public meeting on exploring...
AI's Real-World Impact in Pharma and Medicine
Just out-latest @timmermanreport post: AI in Practice: on the important, difficult work of getting AI to deliver-in pharma, medicine, & beyond. https://t.co/fuwuxubhrb Cited: @Loftus, @oziadias, @DeanKateBaicker, @EricTopol, @patricksmalone, @arjunmanrai, @zakkohane, @WSJBooks
CRISPR Base Editing Provides Irreversible Microbial Biocontainment
A CRISPR-dCas9 base editing system now enables irreversible shutdown of essential genes in engineered microbes, offering a robust biocontainment strategy that minimizes escape and enhances biosafety for industrial and therapeutic applications. biotechnology
Modern Tech's Black Boxes: GLP‑1s and AI
Listening to Ezra Klein & Julie Belluz talk about the black box that obscures our understanding of GLP-1s, you can't help thinking of the black box that obscures our understanding of AI. Feels like the modern condition: magical technologies in...
CRISPR Screens Reveal RNA Targets that Boost T‑cell Killing
High-content CRISPR activation screens identify synthetically lethal RNA-based mechanisms to sensitize cancer cells to targeted T cell cytotoxicity https://t.co/gi3hEvoi9V https://t.co/njFRebLRVo
Isomorphic Labs Eyes $2B Raise, Biotech’s Second‑largest
Great scoop from @RebeccaTorrenc5 & @mhbergen on Isomorphic Labs in "advanced discussions to raise more than $2 billion in a new round of funding" led by Thrive Capital Would be second-largest VC raise ever in biotech, only behind $3B for...
AI-Driven Method Creates Robust Clinical Trial Surrogate Markers
Super interesting via @oziadias & @DeanKateBaicker on an approach to generating robust surrogate markers, urgently needed but elusive, for clin trials, essentially via channeling the AI-enabled empiric analysis that I associate w PRS (cc @pnatarajanmd) https://t.co/FDP4Ym8ycC
Politics Controls Medicare Drug Coverage, Shapes Private Insurers
Politics does determine which drugs Medicare &Medicaid pay for, and through those decisions, most private insurers. Wake up dude.
Low‑Cost Vaccines and Open Science Aren’t Evil
Hmmm, presumably making low-cost vaccines to help humanity, $2-4 per dose, no onerous patent restrictions, pioneering a way to bypass big pharma, helping the nation through a terrible pandemic, writing books with academic presses on history of science/medicine, constitute evil?
Government Sets Drug Funding, Market Determines Prices
Guess what, the government NOW decides how much it will pay and for which drugs. It will have to decide which lines of research it will support, as is the case now. The price wll be left to the market,...
SuperDNA: AI-Driven Biotech Hub Accelerates Drug Discovery
Welcome to SuperDNA Up City - this will be the true automation biotechnology + AI Disneyland with 10 thousand humans in the loop. Most people do not realize that even today, with 30 developmental candidates some of which often trigger...
China’s Rapid Dead-Virus Vaccines Match Severe-Case Protection
small point, but the record time is a bit of exaggeration. China developed two old-fashioned dead virus vaccines in roughly the same time-frame. They were less effective in preventing the original strain, but comparably effective in preventing serious illness and...
Gene Therapy Restores Six-Year-Old's Sight Like Magic
The mother of a six-year-old girl who had life-changing eye gene therapy says it is "like someone waved a magic wand and restored her sight https://t.co/IU3YRMtJSG
INBX to Release INBRX‑106 Phase 2 Data Monday
$INBX reporting INBRX-106 ph2 data on Monday. This is the ox40 cancer drug that reportedly drew interest from Merck and others?
MRNA Nanoparticles Reprogram T Cells In Vivo, Show Promise
Impressive. In vivo reprogramming of killer T cells with mRNA-nanoparticle packaging in non-human primates. Multiple use cases in the clinic vs pathogens and cancer, no less an alternative version vs autoimmune diseases https://t.co/ddhebnxvkE @SciImmunology
We’ve Launched the Most AI‑discovered Longevity Drugs
This is cool. Not sure why you need so much money if you are making drugs faster and cheaper. But it is great - maybe I should be thinking about raising more to scale. At the end of the day,...
Smart Homes Integrated with Biotech Extend Lifespan
A bigger house is not going to give you significantly longer life. But a much smarter house integrated into the advanced biotechnology research and clinical ecosystem will. Very happy to see our chapter with CY Leung published in Springer Nature...
Billion-Dollar Ideas Lurk in Free PubMed Data
Martin Shkreli came on MFM a while back and told Shaan and I something interesting: PubMed has 40M+ biomedical papers. It's the government database of every medical innovation ever logged. And it's 100% free. He told us if you sit there and read long...
Patents Aren't the Magic Key to Drug Development
The $3 billion number is hokey for a number of reasons, but the point is that there is not some magical sauce that allows for drugs to be developed when financed by patent monopolies, but not by upfront funding.
Mabwell IPO Highlights China’s Rising Biologics Powerhouse
Do you remember the company which sold their IL11 nanobody to Google Calico after it realized that after 13 years in the business they need a drug for aging? The company is called Mabwell and they just listed in Hong...
Political Shift Boosts Biotech, Trim Long Positions
Macro: political shift lifts biotech risk appetite. Key: report Trump to dismiss FDA chief drove Replimune +21%. Risk: headline volatility & regulatory uncertainty. Insight: trim longs. 📈 — Viktor Kopylov, PhD, CFA. More insights: t.me/si14Kopylov
Short‑Term Pain, Long‑Term Gain: TMDX Still Bullish
Just wrapped up a 45 minute call with $TMDX management… lots of good stuff.. obviously there’s some short term pain from margin compression due to bigger investments (R&D, trials, international expansion, etc) but my conviction has not changed and I...
ZYME ADC
Catching up with $ZYME pan-RAS inhibitor payload ADCs from #AACR26. Seems the setting for each one is tumours that are RAS-mutated as well as expressing the target antigen (PTK7, Ly6E or Claudin18.2). https://t.co/hljX5soZQi
PTCT Jumps 17% on Strong Drug Uptake
$PTCT up 17% on results, really liked that one after writing up this week, nice value with strong uptake in its new drug, and those Jan. calls kept accumulating https://t.co/HEe8G2Sjdx
NEJM Publishes Moderna Flu Data After FDA Refusal
A Friday footnote: The New England Journal of Medicine has published the Moderna influenza vaccine data -- the same that led the FDA's CBER division to refuse to review the vaccine under Vinay Prasad. (That decision, called a refuse-to-file or...
Psilocybin Shows Promise After Decades of Failed Cocaine Treatments
For 50 years the National Institute on Drug Abuse has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to find an effective cocaine addiction medication. After 100+ molecules & many hundreds of studies nothing has been FDA approved. It's the Holy Grail...
GLP‑1 Breakthrough Costs $500/Month, Limiting Access
After catching my breath (unusual for GLP-1 story to discuss their costs approvingly), I suspect both that @continetti (not unusually) is likely directionally right (& I share enthusiasm for free market) - but - at $500/mo for transformative drug -...
Moderna Launches mRNA Hantavirus Vaccine Development in 2024
Did ya know… Moderna began working on an mRNA vaccine for hantavirus in 2024. $MRNA
AI‑enhanced Dog Breath Test Detects Cancers with 90%+ Accuracy
New MCED / cancer screening test: Dogs smell human breathing + Bayesian AI detects multiple cancers with 90.8% sensitivity & 91.3% specificity (AUC 0.962), even in early stages. Phase II India study (1,502 people, 7 cancer types)- strong potential for affordable...
Dual‑LAO Accelerates Robust Binding Free Energy Calculations
New paper published @CommsChem with the @qubit_pharma team led by @Narjes_Ansari: "Dual-LAO for calculating fast and robust relative binding free energies of simple and complex transformations" (#OpenAccess) #compchem #drugdesign @FefeAviat J. Hénin L. Lagardère https://t.co/ktdX8AWMBo
Finger‑prick Blood Test Accurately Detects Active TB, Predicts Risk
A finger-prick blood test measuring immune response can accurately detect active tuberculosis and moderately predict future disease in household contacts, offering potential for more targeted TB screening and prevention. tuberculosis
STING Pathway Emerges as New Cancer Immunotherapy Frontier
The number of new potential ways to rev up the immune response to cancer keeps expanding. Today it's STING-ing it. @ScienceMagazine https://t.co/p9g0Mmc8kG https://t.co/LbKfODQkO1
CAPR Sues NS Pharma over Launch Delays, Pricing Disputes
$CAPR is suing NS Pharma, its deramiocel commercial partner. Capricor alleges NS Pharma is not doing enough to prepare for commercial launch + some pricing mishegas. 8K https://t.co/7iFyLRhKsq
International Team Launches Hantavirus Vaccine Development
JUST IN: Scientists from the UK, US, and South Africa formed a team to develop a hantavirus vaccine, per BBC