STAT Plus: Pharmalittle: Covid-19 vaccine makers pledge to prioritize safety and efficacy; is Operation Warp Speed working?
Good morning, everyone, and nice to see you again after a long holiday break on…
Category: Medicine
STAT Plus: Merck chronic cough drug shows mixed results in late-stage clinical trials, raising questions about its future
An experimental pill from Merck reduced the frequency of chronic coughing enough to achieve the…
Amid broad mistrust of FDA and Trump administration, drug companies seek to reassure public about Covid-19 vaccine safety
WASHINGTON — A group of nine leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies pledged on Tuesday to…
Opinion: Health care conferences should embrace patients as collaborators
Health care conferences like the North American Cystic Fibrosis Conference are as much professional events…
Slime, tornadoes, and static electricity: How the host of ‘Emily’s Wonder Lab’ wants to teach kids about science
When Emily Calandrelli started sketching out plans for her new Netflix science show, she knew…
STAT Plus: ‘An unchartered situation for all of us’: From shipping containers to security concerns, a Covid-19 vaccine supply chain takes shape
For the past few months, Joachim Kuhn has scrambled to rework his factories and rapidly…
Operation Warp Speed promised to do the impossible. How far has it come?
It’s called Operation Warp Speed. And — regardless of one’s politics, one’s level of concern…
STAT Plus: Plasma giant Grifols to buy Silicon Valley startup targeting blood proteins for age-related diseases
The giant blood plasma processing company Grifols on Monday said it has agreed to buy…
Pharma drew a line in the sand over Covid-19 vaccine readiness — because someone had to
Talk about a rebuke. President Trump may want a Covid-19 vaccine to ship in time…
STAT Plus: Blueprint Medicines wins U.S. approval for genetically targeted lung cancer drug
The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved a new drug from Blueprint Medicines for…
You Can Still Have Fun This Labor Day Weekend – and Stay Safe!
Fun, sun, family and celebrations – all part of Labor Day weekend. You can still…
Fauci warns that Labor Day celebrations could drive Covid-19 spikes
Memorial Day and Independence Day celebrations this year spurred big spikes in coronavirus cases —…
New Sexual Partner? Wear a Mask, Doctor Suggests
It may sound out there, but doctors are suggesting that people abstain from kissing and…
STAT Plus: A second U.S. agency will review if Moderna disclosed federal funding in vaccine patents
A second U.S. government agency is now reviewing whether Moderna (MRNA) properly disclosed millions of…
Tech Keeping NBA Players Safer Inside Their Bubble
Technology is giving the NBA a helping hand as it tries to keep its players…
Don’t Expect COVID Vaccine This Year, WHO Says
Vaccines take years to develop, so even a fast-tracked COVID vaccine likely won’t be available…
The U.S. must do some heavy lifting to prepare for heritable genome editing
Countries contemplating giving the green light to heritable genome editing received specific guidance from an…
STAT Plus: ‘The race is on’: China’s I-Mab gets boost from AbbVie to develop a new cancer immunotherapy
HONG KONG — In November 2014, a little less than six years ago, Chinese scientist…
Depression and Anxiety Delaying Medical Treatments for Many
The increasing burden of the pandemic is having an effect on mental health, and might…
STAT Plus: Pharmalittle: Slaoui vows to quit OWS if politics trumps vaccine science; do we have enough freezers?
Good morning. Elizabeth Cooney here, taking the wheel from Ed Silverman today as we ponder…
Opinion: Instead of eliminating drug rebates, use average sales price to set co-insurance levels
Changing key elements of the U.S. health care system can be effective and in the…
Opinion: Go national to solve the country’s looming nursing shortage
Nurses need our support now more than ever as they manage the frontlines in the…
STAT Plus: Oncorus and three other startups got venture funding a year ago. Did it help them do what they said it would?
Most biotech startups are free to tell the world as little or as much as…
‘Carnage’ in a lab dish shows how the coronavirus may damage the heart
Maybe we should think of Covid-19 as a heart disease. When SARS-CoV-2 virus was added…
FDA intrigue, Covid-19 vaccine timelines, and editing elected officials
Should the FDA commissioner resign? How fast can vaccine trials move? And what do Chelsea…
Flu Shot Safer for Pregnant Women than the Flu
Pregnant women are at higher risk of complications from the flu than from the flu…
Keep Antihistamines for Allergies, Danger Behind New TikTok Trend
Reports of teenagers taking Benadryl for recreational use has worried doctors and parents alike. Read…
STAT Plus: Biofourmis raises $100 million for remote patient monitoring tools
Biofourmis, a Boston startup that makes technology to remotely monitor patients with chronic conditions and…
Opinion: Covid-19 is accelerating the Medicare trust fund’s dive toward insolvency
The Covid-19 pandemic has claimed another victim: Medicare’s trust fund. The Congressional Budget Office released…
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Members named to panel probing WHO’s pandemic response
LONDON — An independent panel appointed by the World Health Organization to review its coordination…
Vulnerable Drivers Need Safer Cars
We’re keeping our cars longer, sometimes handing them down to our teens, but is it…
STAT Health Tech: Google’s government contract to use AI in cancer diagnosis & new data on virtual diabetes coaching
A version of this digest first appeared in the weekly STAT Health Tech newsletter. To…
STAT Plus: Amarin loses appeal over heart drug patent, dashing its commercial hopes
Amarin failed to convince a federal appeals court to revive key patents covering its heart…
We’re not ready for more ‘CRISPR babies,’ expert panel warns, but it outlines steps before future attempts
Nearly two years after the birth of the first “CRISPR babies” stunned the world, an…
Don’t Ditch the Mask for a Face Shield
Face shields alone don’t offer protection from COVID-19 infections. Masks are the best bet, along…
STAT Plus: Pharmalittle: States asked to speed Covid-19 vaccine distribution sites; NIH panel contradicts FDA on plasma
Good morning, everyone, and how are you today? We are doing just fine, thank you….
Prominent biotech leaders release Covid-19 guidelines calling for FDA independence, data transparency
WASHINGTON — A group of prominent biotech CEOs are calling on their peers and the…
Opinion: Placebo arms aren’t needed for challenge trials of Covid-19 vaccines
To control the Covid-19 pandemic, we need an effective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that…
STAT Plus: How Trump could use a rare regulatory maneuver to lower drug prices before Election Day, and how it could backfire
WASHINGTON — The final two months before a presidential election don’t typically feature much policymaking,…
Millions of Americans carry the sickle cell trait, many without knowing it. Could they be at risk for severe Covid-19?
Sickle cell disease, which causes Covid-like symptoms — clotting, strokes, and severe oxygen deprivation — …
Sanofi and GSK move Covid-19 vaccine into human trials
Vaccine giants Sanofi and GSK are joining the ranks of Covid-19 vaccine makers testing their…
Experimental drug for ALS, dreamed up in a dorm room, offers patients glimmer of hope
An experimental drug for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, slowed the neurological decline…
Robots Can Make Great Surgical Assistants
While not as cute as R2D2 or C3PO, and not as athletic as transformers, robots…
To Reduce Needless Deaths, Look at Faces, Not Numbers
A physician in Cleveland wants researchers and the media to recognize that when they write…
Easy Access: Studies to Note – Heart Disease
Heart new for today: from “sudden” cardiac arrests not being quite so sudden, to genetic…
Opinion: A landmark for STAT
Today marks a milestone for us at STAT. We published the 2,000th First Opinion, our…
Inexpensive steroids reduce deaths of hospitalized Covid-19 patients, WHO analysis confirms
Use of inexpensive, readily available steroid drugs to treat people hospitalized with Covid-19 reduced the…
STAT Plus: Pharmalittle: U.S. won’t join WHO Covid-19 vaccine program; experts say a vaccine is possible this fall
Top of the morning to you, and a fine one it is. Despite the gray…
STAT Plus: You had questions about precision medicine. Stanford’s Lloyd Minor has answers
Precision medicine is seen by many as the next frontier in health care. Stanford Medicine,…
STAT Plus: What we learned about the business of telemedicine from Amwell and GoodRx’s IPO filings
Last week, two virtual care providers filed paperwork to go public — offering an unprecedented…