Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Pfizer Says It's Leaving BIO, In Major Blow To Pharmaceutical Trade Group
Pfizer has decided to leave the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, according to two sources familiar with the planning. The departure is a blow to BIO, which represents members ranging from small biotech startups to massive pharmaceutical companies. Its the latest instance in a growing trend of pharmaceutical companies re-evaluating their memberships in large trade groups following a historic lobbying loss when Democrats passed a new drug pricing reform law in August 2022. (Cohrs, 12/5)
The Biotechnology Innovation Organization has chosen longtime biotech executive and rare disease advocate John Crowley as its new CEO, the organization announced Tuesday. Crowley came to biotech when his children were diagnosed with a rare genetic neuromuscular disease. (Cohrs, 12/5)
On the weight-loss frenzy
Forty percent of patients who filled a prescription for Novo Nordisk's (NOVOb.CO) Wegovy to treat obesity in 2021 or 2022 were still taking it a year later, more than three times the rate of adherence with older medicines, according to an analysis of medical records and insurance claims data. Only 13% of patients who started taking Contrave from Orexigen Therapeutics and 10% of those who started on Qsymia from Vivus between 2015 and 2022 were still filling their prescriptions a year later, researchers reported on Wednesday in the journal Obesity. (Lapid, 12/6)
Eli Lilly on Tuesday said its recently approved weight loss treatment Zepbound is now available at pharmacies across the U.S., serving as an alternative to rival obesity drugs such as Wegovy that are facing supply issues.Zepbound is the latest entrant to the budding weight loss drug market, which Wall Street expects to grow to about $100 billion by the end of the decade. (Constantino, 12/5)
Every week, about two dozen patients come to a small room in Frederiksberg Hospital, a maze of old red-brick buildings in central Copenhagen. They are blindfolded and told to insert earphones with music. Then a nurse injects them with what they hope is the blockbuster weight-loss drug Wegovy. (Kresge and Muller, 12/6)
In other pharmaceutical industry news
Axcella Health, a small biotech created by the venture firm Flagship Pioneering, is closing a year after the Cambridge firm laid off 85 percent of its workforce. Axcella on Monday disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that shareholders had voted to liquidate and dissolve the 12-year-old company, which was founded by Flagship, the creator of Moderna. (Saltzman, 12/5)
As a teenager, Marie Tornyenu was always having to explain herself. If it wasnt the chronic absences that had her doing homework from a hospital bed, it was the quilted blanket she carried with her on the days she could attend class. It was a running joke that I was like 80 years old, she said. I would usually just laugh it off because the alternative was too depressing. Tornyenu was born with sickle cell disease. (Molteni, 12/6)
Startup LambdaVision Inc. has big plans to develop the worlds first protein-based artificial retina for patients with retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic cause of blindness. Manufacturing the retina involves depositing 200 paper-thin layers of a light-sensitive protein in a polymer mesh. The protein layers must be perfectly even for the retina to work properly, a process thats hard to get right on Earth. (Langreth, 12/5)
