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Weight Loss Drugs Could Create the First $1 Trillion Pharma Companies
Soaring demand for blockbuster weight loss drugs could result in two pharmaceutical companies becoming the first healthcare companies to reach a market capitalization of over $1 trillion.
Norway’s Novo Nordisk and U.S.-based Eli Lilly are inching their way closer to the benchmark that so far only a handful of companies have been able to reach. As of today, Novo Nordisk’s market cap stands at $508 billion, while Eli Lilly’s sits higher at $623 billion.
Only six companies in the world currently have a market cap of over $1 trillion, including Apple at $2.69 trillion and Microsoft at $2.8 trillion. The other companies in this exclusive club are Saudi Aramco, Alphabet, Amazon and Nvidia.
EBay Will Pay $59 Million Settlement Over Pill Presses Sold Online as U.S. Undergoes Overdose Epidemic
The e-commerce giant eBay will pay $59 million in a settlement with the Justice Department over thousands of pill press machines sold on the platform, the Justice Department said Wednesday.
The machines can be used to manufacture counterfeit pills that look just like prescription pills but instead can be laced with substances like fentanyl, a synthetic opioid drug that is largely fueling the deadliest overdose crisis in U.S. history.
The company failed to verify buyers’ identities and keep records required by law, and many people who bought pill presses on eBay have been prosecuted in connection with trafficking illegal counterfeit pills, the Justice Department said.
The Fentanyl Crisis Is Being Driven by Supply — Not Demand
Before Mexico’s cartel wars, I lived in the country for 10 years. I didn’t write much about drugs, focusing instead on immigration. But if asked, I’d have probably agreed with the Mexican line: Demand for drugs from the United States was creating supply.
Now — after years of interviewing people with addiction, their family members, cops, traffickers and dealers, drug counselors, paramedics, ER doctors and nurses, as well as writing two books on opioids, including fentanyl — I believe the opposite: Street fentanyl, indeed all opioids, are about supply creating demand.
Opioids transform our brain chemistry, creating dependency and squelching our basic instincts for survival. But it is relentless supply that perpetuates this demand by making opioids readily available — and getting sober an agony. The most recent provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for a 12-month period that ended in August, estimated that there were 112,000 fatal overdoses nationwide, an increase of almost 3% over the 12-month period ending in August 2022.
Supply creating demand is the story of our national opioid epidemic, with an inundation of pain pills creating a population of addicted consumers that didn’t before exist. Take West Virginia: In the 1990s, before it was flooded with opioid pills, it ranked near the bottom of the 50 states when it came to overdose rate. Now, it ranks first.
Ad Firm Publicis, Drugmaker Hikma Settle U.S. Opioid Cases for $500 Million
A division of French advertising company Publicis Groupe SA (PUBP.PA) and drug company Hikma Pharmaceuticals (HIK.L) have reached separate settlements worth a collective $500 million to resolve claims that they helped fuel the deadly U.S. opioid epidemic.
The settlements announced by U.S. state attorneys general on Thursday add to the more than $50 billion that drug manufacturers, distributors, pharmacy operators and consultants have agreed to pay to resolve lawsuits and investigations over their roles in the drug addiction crisis.
Publicis Health, a subsidiary of Publicis Groupe, agreed to pay $350 million to resolve claims by all U.S. states and territories that it helped OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma devise marketing strategies to boost sales of its prescription opioid painkiller.
Massachusetts, which sued Publicis in 2021 alleging it collected more than $50 million to help Purdue get doctors to prescribe its opioids to more patients, for longer periods of time, and at higher doses, helped lead the multistate investigation.
Biogen Ditches Aduhelm, an Alzheimer’s Drug That Was Approved Amid Controversy
Biogen has announced it will give up ownership and halt sales of Aduhelm, an embattled Alzheimer’s disease drug that was scrutinized following its 2021 approval.
Biogen said it terminated a licensing agreement with Neurimmune, which controls the rights to the drug.
Aduhelm, which became the first new Food and Drug Administration-approved drug for the disease since 2003, targets amyloid beta proteins that form in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. The FDA‘s accelerated approval of the drug in 2021 was seen as problematic by many in the medical community because the agency overruled the advice of expert outside advisers who said clinical trials had failed to prove the drug was effective.
Biogen also faced criticism because it was initially charging $56,000 per year for the drug. The Cambridge, Massachusetts, company later slashed the price in half, but critics said it was still too expensive for a drug not proven to slow memory and thinking problems.
Surge in Syphilis Cases Leads Some Providers to Ration Penicillin
Nationwide, syphilis rates are at a 70-year high. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Jan. 30 that 207,255 cases were reported in 2022, continuing a steep increase over five years. Between 2018 and 2022, syphilis rates rose about 80%. The epidemic of sexually transmitted infections — especially syphilis — is “out of control,” said the National Coalition of STD Directors.
But this already difficult situation was complicated last spring by a shortage of a specific penicillin injection that is the go-to treatment for syphilis. The ongoing shortage is so severe that public health agencies have recommended that providers ration the drug — prioritizing pregnant patients, since it is the only syphilis treatment considered safe for them. Congenital syphilis, which happens when the mom spreads the disease to the fetus, can cause birth defects, miscarriages, and stillbirths.
The rise in syphilis has created demand for the injection that manufacturer Pfizer can’t keep up with, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. “There is insufficient supply for usual ordering,” the ASHP said in a memo.
GSK Inks Another Zantac Settlement Ahead of Trial in California
After GSK spent the latter half of 2023 warding off concerns about the swelling Zantac product liability litigation, the company is back at the settlement table in 2024. Thursday, GSK said it has reached a confidential settlement with plaintiff David Browne, resolving a lawsuit in California state court that was set to go to trial later this month. Now, the case is in the process of being dismissed.
GSK’s settlement with Browne follows several other Zantac deals struck by the drugmaker over the past 8 months. In October, GSK revealed that it had resolved 4 cases, one of which was set to go to trial in November.
The three other settlements resolved GSK’s portion of bellwether breast cancer lawsuits in California from former users of the drug. Before that, in June, GSK inked a settlement with plaintiff James Goetz about a month before a planned trial.
Intense public scrutiny of Zantac started in 2019 when an online pharmacy found high levels of a likely carcinogen in the drug and its generics. Recalls followed, and the FDA pulled the drug from the market in 2020.
Novavax Is on Thin Ice, and the Latest Update Isn’t Exactly Encouraging
Novavax, the company whose corporate missteps repeatedly sidelined an effective COVID-19 vaccine, is relying on demand for booster doses to remain solvent. And the latest update isn’t exactly encouraging.
The company said yesterday that it would lay off another 12% of its staff, expanding on a cost-cutting plan disclosed last year. In the end, Novavax will have reduced its workforce by about 30% compared to 2023, part of an effort to reduce its expenses in the months to come.
The big question is whether Novavax was able to meet its already reduced financial expectations in the fourth quarter. The company had previously forecast $1 billion in 2023 sales before cutting that number in half. Novavax won’t disclose its revenue until later this month, but its latest communications don’t exactly inspire confidence. “We continue to spend significant time grounding our understanding of the market opportunity based on learnings from this season,” CEO John Jacobs said in a statement.
Sanofi Expects RSV Antibody to Breach Blockbuster Status in 2024, Even as Supply Hitch Drags On
As Sanofi strives to become a global immunology leader, it’s also busy making the most of a crucial immunization rollout with partner AstraZeneca. On both fronts, Sanofi expects to see dividends in 2024.
Last year represented a “pivotal” stretch for the drugmaker, one in which the French pharma largely proved its thesis that it can become a global immunology powerhouse, CEO Paul Hudson said on a call with investors Thursday.
Separately, Sanofi’s AZ-partnered respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) antibody Beyfortus pulled down 547 million euros (about $592 million) during its first year on the market, a figure Sanofi expects to roughly double this year.
So far, Beyfortus’ uptake in the U.S. has surpassed previous childhood immunization benchmarks, such as those for rotavirus and pneumococcal disease, according to the company. Sanofi has successfully delivered its antibody to a “broad infant population,” reaching some 35% of young patients in the U.S. and France and a whopping 90% in Spain, Triomphe said.
Scientists Sound Alarm on New Drug-Resistant E. Coli
U.S. News & World Report reported:
A new and worrisome antibiotic-resistant form of E. coli has been identified at a children’s hospital in China.
Already, so-called ST410 strains of the E. coli bacterium — resistant to last-resort antibiotics called carbapenems — have become the most common drug-resistant strains seen in Chinese hospitals, according to British researchers.
But a new, more virulent version of ST410, called B5/H24RxC, was found to be behind two E. coli outbreaks at a children’s hospital in China, according to the report published recently in the journal Nature Communications.
This variant is highly infectious, and it appears to grow faster and cause more harm to living organisms than its predecessors, researchers warned.
