June 26, 2025

The need-to-know this morning

Incyte announced the retirement of CEO Hervé Hoppenot after 11 years at the company. Bill Meury was appointed Incyte's new CEO. Meury was most recently CEO of Anthos Therapeutics, which was acquired by Novartis. Prior to that, he worked at Karuna Therapeutics, which was acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb.
Altimmune's stock price dropped by more than half in early trading after the company announced disappointing results from a study of its GLP-1/glucagon targeted drug in MASH. The drug, called pemvidutide, failed to show a statistically significant improvement in liver fibrosis compared to a placebo.

oncology

Generic cancer drugs used around the world fail quality tests, investigation shows

A sweeping investigation has uncovered that vital generic chemotherapy drugs — used in over 100 countries to treat common cancers — are failing quality tests, leaving patients vulnerable to ineffective treatment and toxic side effects. One in five samples contained dangerously inaccurate levels of active ingredients, according to a report from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism — with some pills holding as little as a quarter of what the label promised. Others contained too much.

“Both scenarios are horrendous in my eyes,” said Shereen Nabhani-Gebara, vice chair of the British Oncology Pharmacy Association. “It takes a lot of courage for someone with cancer to accept a diagnosis, but then to be short-changed like this when they are trying their best is heartbreaking — because this is someone’s life.”

Most of the substandard drugs were made in India, the world’s largest exporter of generic medicines, where manufacturers have repeatedly evaded consequences while cutting corners. From Ethiopia to the U.S., doctors see patients deteriorating on faulty drugs — while global safety nets crumble under the weight of cost-cutting and regulatory overwhelm.

glp-1 drugs

Novo Nordisk says it's playing the long game

Novo Nordisk is pushing back against the notion that it has fallen behind Eli Lilly in the weight loss drug market, despite a halved stock price and investor disappointment over CagriSema’s Phase 3 results. At the American Diabetes Association meeting, Novo executives emphasized a broader strategy based on more than simply chasing maximum weight loss. They’re interested in offering patients flexible dosing, fewer side effects, and treatments tailored to comorbidities.

“For the first time in medical history, at that scale, I really believe that patients are taking over the choice of what they want to achieve in terms of outcomes, in terms of benefits they can have,” Ludovic Helfgott, who leads Novo’s commercial teams, told STAT’s Elaine Chen.

Though Novo has been criticized for being overly cautious and slow to adopt direct-to-consumer models, company leadership insists that it has a viable path forward.

drug costs

PhRMA CEO Ubl on "most-favored nation" pricing

The Trump administration is correct in saying that Americans pay too much for prescription drugs, but the issue isn’t just “foreign freeloading,” PhRMA CEO Stephen Ubl opines for STAT. The real culprits, he writes, are likely domestic middlemen like pharmacy benefit managers, as well as hospitals exploding loopholes in programs like 340B.

PBMs pocket 42 cents of every commercial drug dollar, he points out, while hospitals mark up medications bought for pennies by thousands of percent, driving costs and consolidation without benefiting patients.

Instead of pursuing a “most-favored nation” approach to curb drug costs, Ubl says President Trump ought to press trade partners to spend a set share of their GDP on new innovative medicines — as well as reform PBM oversight and 340B usage.

POLICY

ACIP seeks overhaul in review of vaccines

In a major shift that has alarmed pediatricians and public health experts, the newly reconstituted federal vaccine advisory committee — reshaped by health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — announced it will begin re-evaluating long-approved vaccines and the cumulative childhood immunization schedule, echoing claims long promoted by vaccine skeptics.

The announcement came on the first day of a two-day meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, which normally attends ACIP meetings as one of about 30 “liaison” members, announced that it would no longer take part in the process. “We won’t lend our name or our expertise to a system that is being politicized at the expense of children’s health,” the group's president said.

She said the AAP would continue to publish its own immunization schedule, which it has done for decades.

RESEARCH

NIH halts grant cuts after court ruling

The NIH has abruptly paused all further terminations of biomedical research grants, according to an internal email obtained by STAT. The move follows a federal judge’s order reinstating more than 1,000 grants deemed “void and illegal.”

The terminations — more than 2,600 in total — largely targeted studies involving DEI and LGBTQ+ issues and drew fierce legal challenges from researchers and state lawmakers alike, STAT’s Aniz Oza reports.

NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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