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Finland Is Offering Farmworkers Bird Flu Shots. Some Experts Say the U.S. Should, Too.
As bird flu spreads among dairy cattle in the U.S., veterinarians and researchers have taken note of Finland’s move to vaccinate farmworkers at risk of infection. They wonder why their government doesn’t do the same.
“Now is the time to offer the vaccines to farmworkers in the United States,” said Nahid Bhadelia, director of the Boston University Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases. Even more urgent measures are lagging in the U.S., she added. Testing of farmworkers and cows is sorely needed to detect the H5N1 bird flu virus, study it, and extinguish it before it becomes a fixture on farms — posing an ever-present pandemic threat.
Demetre Daskalakis, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said the agency takes bird flu seriously, and the U.S. is stockpiling 4.8 million doses of the vaccine. But, he said, “there’s no recommendation to launch a vaccine campaign.”
On July 8, researchers reported that the virus may be closer to spreading between people than previously thought. It still doesn’t appear to do so, but experiments suggest it has the ability to infect human airways. It also spread between two laboratory ferrets through the air.
Pfizer Moves Forward With Once-Daily Version of Weight Loss Pill After Setbacks
Pfizer on Thursday said it will move forward with a once-daily version of its weight loss pill, danuglipron, after it saw “encouraging” data in an ongoing early-stage study.
The company evaluated several once-daily formulations of the drug and identified one with “the most favorable profile” in terms of safety and how the body reacts to the drug.
Pfizer is one of several drugmakers racing to win a slice of the market for a highly popular class of weight loss and diabetes drugs called GLP-1 agonists. Some analysts expect the industry to be worth roughly $100 billion by the end of the decade.
But investors have been pessimistic about the company’s potential in the GLP-1 space ever since it scrapped a different once-daily pill in June 2023 due to elevated liver enzymes in patients who received the treatment. Those were among a string of setbacks Pfizer faced last year on top of the rapid decline of its COVID business, which battered its stock.
Pfizer Gets Final Approval of $50 Million EpiPen Litigation Deal
Pfizer Inc. has been granted final approval of a $50 million deal to settle a yearslong multidistrict dispute with allegations that the company conspired to inflate the price of life-saving EpiPen injections.
Judge Daniel D. Crabtree of the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas highlighted the settlement’s immediate recovery for a class of direct EpiPen purchasers in a Tuesday order granting final approval.
“This immediate recovery is more valuable than a ‘mere possibility’ that Class Members might achieve a more favorable outcome ‘after protracted and expensive litigation’ that may well last ‘many years in the future,’” Crabtree said.
Move Over, Oncology: Obesity, Diabetes Meds Will Take Over 2030’s Top Drug Rankings, Evaluate Forecasts
It’s well known that obesity drugs from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly are on a high-flying growth trajectory that doesn’t look to be letting up anytime soon. But, according to a new report from Evaluate, obesity products are set to take over many familiar stalwarts on the world’s top-selling drugs list by the end of the decade.
If last year marked the industry’s “age of uncertainty,” this one is “pharma’s growth boost,” according to Evaluate’s 2024 world preview report. 2023’s report detailed key assumptions, such as the U.S. market’s profitability and the growth that big M&A deals offer, in flux. Now, more “predicable realities” have entered the picture and seem to be here to stay.
Reflecting a new shift, oncology drugs have taken a back seat to the rise of obesity and diabetes meds, specifically from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. Lilly’s tirzepatide products Mounjaro and Zepbound, plus Novo’s semaglutide based Ozempic, Wegovy and its newest candidate CagriSema, are expected to be some of the top drugs by 2030 sales with a combined haul of more than $100 billion.
Novo Nordisk’s Weekly Insulin Rejected by FDA
The Food and Drug Administration rejected Novo Nordisk’s weekly insulin for the treatment of diabetes in a rare setback for the pharmaceutical giant.
The agency has requests related to the manufacturing process and the use of the insulin specifically in type 1 diabetes patients, Novo said in a statement Wednesday. The company, which had submitted an application for the drug for both type 1 and type 2 patients, said it does not expect to be able to fulfill the requests this year.
This comes after the FDA in May convened a group of advisers to discuss the drug, called icodec. The panel voted against approval in type 1 patients, raising concerns about the risk of dangerously low blood sugar in that population.
Feds Poised to Sue Pharmacy Gatekeepers Over High Drug Costs
The Federal Trade Commission is getting ready to sue big healthcare companies, claiming that they are illegally maximizing profits by steering patients to high-cost drugs, according to four people with direct knowledge of the case discussions.
The pending case would target large pharmaceutical intermediaries owned by UnitedHealth Group, CVS and Cigna, claiming that they pushed patients to brand-name drugs, including insulin, according to the four people.
