2020 - Pharmacist Digest

STAT+: The CRISPR companies are not OK

STAT

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

No less an authority than a Nobel Prize committee announced, in 2020, that CRISPR “may make the dream of curing inherited diseases come true.” The gene editing tool, wrested out of bacteria 13 years ago by a fractious group of biochemists, was supposed to change medicine.

STAT+: Pfizer to pay $60 million to settle claims that Biohaven paid kickbacks to doctors

STAT

JANUARY 24, 2025

The authorities alleged that, from March 2020 through September 2022, Biohaven improperly paid doctors speaking fees and for meals at “high end” restaurants in order to persuade them to prescribe Nurtec ODT, the centerpiece of the $11.6 Department of Justice. billion acquisition.

STAT+: Wyden claims Pfizer used a ‘colossal’ scheme to avoid paying billions in U.S. taxes

STAT

MARCH 27, 2025

for 2018 and 2020. In what one U.S. lawmaker described as possibly the “largest tax-dodging scheme” by a pharmaceutical company in history, Pfizer sold $20 billion in medicines to U.S. customers, but treating the profits as foreign income for tax purposes.

Pharmaceutical Companies

Pharmaceutical Companies Pharmaceutical Companies

To tackle race in clinical guidelines, researchers seek alternatives to federal dollars

STAT

JUNE 26, 2025

After clinical algorithms that use race as a variable came under scrutiny in 2020, several commonly used tools have been revised to align with medicine’s understanding that race is not a biological construct, but a social one.

RFK Jr. calls rising autism rate an ‘epidemic.’ Researchers call it a ‘good sign’

STAT

APRIL 15, 2025

of kids surveyed in 2020 for the previous report. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report says that 3.2% of kids surveyed in 2022 have autism spectrum disorder, a slight uptick from the 2.8% The report also confirmed a recent trend that autism prevalence is higher in non-white kids than in white kids. Read the rest…

STAT+: Sutter Health settles sweeping antitrust case, narrowly avoiding trial

STAT

MARCH 3, 2025

based Sutter want to be repaid for the money they spent on health insurance from 2011 through 2020. Terms of the settlement were not immediately released on Monday, but it’s likely sizable given the scope of the case. The individuals and businesses suing Sacramento, Calif.-based Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

Hospitals

STAT+: Why Orexo is abandoning a digital therapeutic for depression

STAT

DECEMBER 3, 2024

The companies have worked together on Deprexis in the United States since 2020 and have deals for two other apps, including Modia, an app that provides psychosocial support to people being treated for opioid addiction. Orexo announced this week that it will no longer license the product, called Deprexis, from German manufacturer GAIA.

Pharmaceutical Companies

Pharmaceutical Companies Pharmaceutical Companies

STAT+: After Canada required pharma to pay fees, drug agency recommended coverage more often

STAT

MARCH 3, 2025

The analysis tallied a total of 258 approved drugs for which companies submitted applications between 2009 and 2020, and then examined funding recommendations that were subsequently made through December 2020 for most drugs. Recommendations for cancer treatments were reviewed through December 2021.

Drug Pricing

STAT+: With $40 million, former DeepMind employees launch startup ‘laser-focused’ on AI protein design

STAT

FEBRUARY 12, 2025

The Alphabet-owned AI company took the biology world by storm in 2020 with AlphaFold2 , the protein structure prediction AI platform that “solved” a decades-old biology problem. Where is DeepMind’s AI protein design spinout? In 2021, the company spun out Isomorphic Labs, an AI drug discovery company.

Advanced cancers returned to pre-pandemic levels, according to a reassuring report

STAT

APRIL 22, 2025

Many Americans were forced to postpone cancer screenings — colonoscopies, mammograms, and lung scans — for several months in 2020 as Covid-19 overwhelmed doctors and hospitals.

Hospitals

130,000 U.S. cancer cases went undiagnosed in Covid pandemic, study finds

STAT

OCTOBER 14, 2024

health care system pivoted to meet Covid-19 in 2020, routine health visits and screenings where many cancer cases would have been caught didn’t happen. That leaves a troubling mystery for epidemiologists, as it means experts still don’t know what happened with the roughly 130,000 cancer cases that were missed in 2020.

Routine vaccinations drop among U.S. kindergartners for the third year in a row

STAT

JANUARY 12, 2023

Vaccinations among children remain high, but the trend — with coverage dropping from about 95% in the 2019-2020 school year to 94% in 2020-2021 to 93% in 2021-2022, according to the data released Thursday — has health officials concerned. The percentage of U.S.

Vaccines

STAT+: In the fight against cancer, it’s boom times for radiopharmaceuticals

STAT

NOVEMBER 8, 2023

When Ken Song was getting ready to leave his job as the CEO of a small biotech in 2020, he wasn’t sure what was next. But he knew one thing. “I deliberately said I’m not going to do oncology. Oncology is so crowded. Everybody thinks they have the solution, but the reality is, it’s all noise,” he said.

Study challenges finding that Black babies are more likely to survive under the care of Black physicians

STAT

OCTOBER 23, 2024

In August of 2020, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science made headlines with its finding that Black infants were half as likely to survive to their first birthday when they were cared for by white doctors instead of Black ones.

Vision loss and high cholesterol identified as risk factors for dementia

STAT

JULY 31, 2024

These new additions join 12 other risk factors outlined by the commission, affiliated with University College London, in previous reports on dementia prevention, intervention, and care in 2017 and 2020.

Diabetes

After private equity firms gobbled up wheelchair makers, users pay the price in long repair times

STAT

MAY 1, 2024

When Maureen Amirault purchased her first electric wheelchair in 2020, she had been living with muscular dystrophy for decades. Braces and a cane helped, but walking became too arduous, so she got a chair through a company called Numotion. The first few months were great. The headrest fell off, but Numotion fixed it in a matter of days.

Opinion: Long Covid is a new name for an old syndrome

STAT

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

Today, it is no longer a new public health enigma, but the outlook for sufferers is no better than when the condition was first recognized in early 2020. Hopes were raised in December 2020 when Congress provided $1.15 Long Covid goes by many names. Although its prevalence has recently decreased to 6% of the U.S.

NIH launches $270 million anti-overdose research program for, and led by, Native Americans

STAT

AUGUST 28, 2024

Fatal drug overdoses shot up during the peak of Covid-19 in 2020. And as the dust settled on the pandemic, it quickly became clear that one demographic group had fared far worse than any other: Native Americans.

Merck Ebola vaccine Ervebo shown to offer substantial protection

STAT

AUGUST 21, 2024

Merck’s Ebola vaccine offered substantial protection to people vaccinated during the 2018-2020 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with an effectiveness of 84% in those who had been vaccinated at least 10 days before being exposed to the virus, a new study reports.

Vaccines

A closer look at the health tech executive leading Medicare

STAT

APRIL 29, 2025

Klomp was formerly the CEO of health IT company Collective Medical, which he sold, in 2020, for hundreds of millions of dollars. As of last week, Chris Klomp is in charge of the Center for Medicare. Unlike predecessors, he’s not a policy wonk. Read the rest…

STAT+: Belgian anti-trust authorities probe Roche for allegedly delaying biosimilars of two cancer meds

STAT

MARCH 17, 2025

In a brief statement , the Belgian Competition Authority alleged that Roche offered financial incentives to hospitals between 2017 and 2020 to deter them from considering competitive bids from other pharmaceutical companies that could supply similar medicines.

The only tribal medical school in the U.S. graduates its first Native American doctors

STAT

MAY 16, 2024

Started in 2020 , it’s an effort to boost the numbers of both Indigenous physicians and doctors willing to treat patients in rural areas experiencing severe physician shortages. Read the rest…

Medical Schools

WHO recommends dropping component of many flu vaccines

STAT

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

A family of viruses known as influenza B/Yamagata has not been seen since March 2020, when flu circulation worldwide declined to very low levels in the face of the onslaught of Covid and the protections people took to avoid contracting it.

Vaccines

One-quarter of Americans have little to no confidence in scientists to act in public’s best interests, per report

STAT

NOVEMBER 14, 2023

They found that roughly a quarter of Americans — 27% — said they have not too much or no confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests, compared to 12% who said the same in April 2020. “Ratings of medical scientists mirror the trend seen in ratings of scientists generally,” the report notes.

By the numbers: America’s alcohol-related health problems are rising fast

STAT

JUNE 27, 2024

Drinking, which was already on the rise before 2020, became a coping mechanism for overburdened parents, burnt-out workers, the traumatized, and the bored. In the pit of the pandemic, with no one to see and nowhere to go, and horrors unfolding daily outside the front door, there was for many a reliable bright spot: the 5 p.m.

Rollout of Covid vaccines is bumpy, but not unexpected, experts say

STAT

SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

The latest rollout of Covid-19 vaccines has been messy, with people facing more challenges getting one of the updated shots than they may have experienced since the frantic start of the very first vaccination campaign in late 2020 and the first half of 2021.

Vaccines

Three lessons from Covid that could help global leaders prevent the next pandemic

STAT

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

Everyone has things that, looking back, they would have done differently in the early days of 2020, had they known how the Covid-19 pandemic would tear across the globe. But those regrets may be particularly poignant for global leaders whose actions (or lack thereof) had direct impacts on how Covid-19 spread.

Biden administration announces new partnership with 50 countries to stifle future pandemics

STAT

APRIL 16, 2024

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s administration will help 50 countries identify and respond to infectious diseases, with the goal of preventing pandemics like the Covid-19 outbreak that suddenly halted normal life around the globe in 2020.

Communication

STAT+: FDA’s new head of device safety held senior role at company troubled by safety warnings

STAT

SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

Segan was chief medical officer at Olympus from 2020 to 2023. The Food and Drug Administration has tapped Ross Segan, a former device industry exec and Army veteran, to lead its division charged with ensuring medical device safety.

Covid-19 increases risk of developing autoimmune disease, but vaccination helps, large study shows

STAT

MARCH 4, 2024

The Covid group was compared with an uninfected control group and a group of patients who had influenza during the same period from 2020 to 2022. AIRDs include rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjögren syndrome, mixed connective tissue disease, vasculitis, and other conditions. Read the rest…

Vaccines

Vaccines Medical Records

New leadership team elected at PDA BAME Network

The Pharmacist

DECEMBER 4, 2024

The PDA BAME Network, which was launched in 2020 to help advance the organisation’s work on equality, has a president, vice president and honorary secretary. The Pharmacists’ Defence Association (PDA) has announced the newly elected leaders of its Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) pharmacists’ network.

Hospitals

Opinion: Preparing schools for the H5N1 bird flu they’re likely to face

STAT

JULY 11, 2024

in early 2020, has been scrutinized by numerous case studies, after-action reports , and Congressional fact-finding hearings. To prepare for a potential H5N1 avian influenza jump to humans, schools need to be preparing for the scenario now before a sustained transmission event occurs. The response to Covid-19, which first appeared in the U.S.

A new discovery about carbon dioxide is challenging decades-old ventilation doctrine

STAT

JUNE 4, 2024

But in 2020, they became, almost overnight, a hot commodity. Carbon dioxide monitors have been around for decades. All of a sudden, people wanted them to help assess the safety of indoor spaces — to gauge the likelihood of breathing in coronavirus-laced particles that until very recently had been in someone else’s lungs.

STAT+: Medical journal peer reviewers are paid millions by industry, study finds

STAT

OCTOBER 10, 2024

Between 2020 and 2022, 1,155 of the 1,962 experts who reviewed studies for The BMJ, JAMA, The Lancet, and The New England Journal of Medicine received some form of payment.

Drug Development

She got off dialysis. Her doctor thinks others with acute kidney injury can too

STAT

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

SAN FRANCISCO — It was during some of the darkest days of the pandemic — November 2020 — when Melissa Lawson, 36, was helicoptered from an emergency room in Santa Rosa, Calif., to a hospital here, her blood so thick with white blood cells doctors thought she might not survive the night.

Hospitals

STAT+: How a device maker inundated pain patients with unwanted batteries and surprise bills

STAT

JUNE 4, 2024

In theory, they’re supposed to power a basic pain management device she ordered from a company called Zynex Medical in 2020. For two years, the batteries and electrode pads arrived each month at her home in West Boylston, Mass. In reality, they sit in her closet, taking up an annoying amount of space.

Packaging

STAT+: Key lawmakers pressure Biden to preserve telehealth prescribing of effective addiction treatment

STAT

OCTOBER 2, 2024

But in early 2020, the DEA issued an emergency waiver that allowed health providers to prescribe the medications remotely. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.) urged the DEA to continue allowing health providers to prescribe buprenorphine, a controlled substance used to treat opioid addiction, without requiring an in-person visit.

Controlled Substances

Philadelphia-area health systems end use of four race-based algorithms to guide care

STAT

OCTOBER 21, 2024

The inclusion of race in dozens of these tools has sparked vigorous debates and roiled medicine since 2020, when many physicians began pointing out that the tools rely on faulty science that depicts race as biological, and that they can harm some already marginalized patients by making it seem they are healthier than they really are.

Hospitals

STAT+: At Aspen Ideas, a life science VC sees cause for long-term optimism despite a rocky market

STAT

JUNE 30, 2025

And while the gene-sequencing juggernaut eventually spun out Grail under regulatory pressure, the deal proved lucrative for Owens and set the stage for her to start Initiate in 2020. Owens sat down last week with STAT for a conversation during the Aspen Ideas: Health meeting.

People in Republican-voting states more likely to report Covid-19 vaccine side effects, study says

STAT

MARCH 29, 2024

People in Republican-voting states were more likely to report adverse events after receiving a Covid-19 vaccination than people living in Democratic-leaning states, a new analysis finds, suggesting that how people view their post-vaccine side effects or decide whether to report them may be shaped by their political views.

Vaccines

Gender-affirming surgeries tripled in the U.S. between 2016-2019, study finds

STAT

AUGUST 23, 2023

Over 48,000 people got some type of gender-affirming surgery between 2016-2020, with a slight decrease in the number of surgeries performed in 2020, likely because of the pandemic. The number of gender-affirming surgeries taking place in the U.S.

Covid ignited a global controversy over what is an airborne disease. The WHO just expanded its definition

STAT

APRIL 18, 2024

That’s because public health advice in early 2020 focused on sanitizing surfaces, not protecting against a virus that could be spread through the air. With everyone scrubbing their groceries, mail, even library books, good luck finding antibacterial wipes or disinfectant sprays back then.

STAT+: Ascension is racing to unload hospitals as execs work to stem losses

STAT

JULY 1, 2024

Ascension has lost almost $4 billion on operations from fiscal 2020 through fiscal 2023, triggering deals to offload almost 30 hospitals. The year after former CEO Anthony Tersigni and former finance chief Anthony Speranzo stepped down, their sprawling empire of roughly 140 hospitals underwent the ultimate stress test: the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hospitals

Justice Department sues Cigna for allegedly exaggerating conditions of Medicare Advantage members

STAT

OCTOBER 17, 2022

The decision is a change of heart from federal prosecutors, who originally declined to intervene in the whistleblower case back in 2020. Read the rest…

Health Insurance Companies

STAT+: The CRISPR companies are not OK

STAT+: Pfizer to pay $60 million to settle claims that Biohaven paid kickbacks to doctors

Trending Sources

STAT+: Wyden claims Pfizer used a ‘colossal’ scheme to avoid paying billions in U.S. taxes

To tackle race in clinical guidelines, researchers seek alternatives to federal dollars

RFK Jr. calls rising autism rate an ‘epidemic.’ Researchers call it a ‘good sign’

STAT+: Sutter Health settles sweeping antitrust case, narrowly avoiding trial

STAT+: Why Orexo is abandoning a digital therapeutic for depression

STAT+: After Canada required pharma to pay fees, drug agency recommended coverage more often

STAT+: With $40 million, former DeepMind employees launch startup ‘laser-focused’ on AI protein design

Advanced cancers returned to pre-pandemic levels, according to a reassuring report

130,000 U.S. cancer cases went undiagnosed in Covid pandemic, study finds

Routine vaccinations drop among U.S. kindergartners for the third year in a row

STAT+: In the fight against cancer, it’s boom times for radiopharmaceuticals

Study challenges finding that Black babies are more likely to survive under the care of Black physicians

Vision loss and high cholesterol identified as risk factors for dementia

After private equity firms gobbled up wheelchair makers, users pay the price in long repair times

Opinion: Long Covid is a new name for an old syndrome

NIH launches $270 million anti-overdose research program for, and led by, Native Americans

Merck Ebola vaccine Ervebo shown to offer substantial protection

A closer look at the health tech executive leading Medicare

STAT+: Belgian anti-trust authorities probe Roche for allegedly delaying biosimilars of two cancer meds

The only tribal medical school in the U.S. graduates its first Native American doctors

WHO recommends dropping component of many flu vaccines

One-quarter of Americans have little to no confidence in scientists to act in public’s best interests, per report

By the numbers: America’s alcohol-related health problems are rising fast

Rollout of Covid vaccines is bumpy, but not unexpected, experts say

Three lessons from Covid that could help global leaders prevent the next pandemic

Biden administration announces new partnership with 50 countries to stifle future pandemics

STAT+: FDA’s new head of device safety held senior role at company troubled by safety warnings

Covid-19 increases risk of developing autoimmune disease, but vaccination helps, large study shows

New leadership team elected at PDA BAME Network

Opinion: Preparing schools for the H5N1 bird flu they’re likely to face

A new discovery about carbon dioxide is challenging decades-old ventilation doctrine

STAT+: Medical journal peer reviewers are paid millions by industry, study finds

She got off dialysis. Her doctor thinks others with acute kidney injury can too

STAT+: How a device maker inundated pain patients with unwanted batteries and surprise bills

STAT+: Key lawmakers pressure Biden to preserve telehealth prescribing of effective addiction treatment

Philadelphia-area health systems end use of four race-based algorithms to guide care

STAT+: At Aspen Ideas, a life science VC sees cause for long-term optimism despite a rocky market

People in Republican-voting states more likely to report Covid-19 vaccine side effects, study says

Gender-affirming surgeries tripled in the U.S. between 2016-2019, study finds

Covid ignited a global controversy over what is an airborne disease. The WHO just expanded its definition

STAT+: Ascension is racing to unload hospitals as execs work to stem losses

Justice Department sues Cigna for allegedly exaggerating conditions of Medicare Advantage members

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