In this week’s Innovationrx edition we look at the HHS nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s first senate confirmation, the chaos at the NIH and with federal research financing, new doses for an Alzheimer’s drug, an important tuberculosis and more. To get it in your inbox, Subscribe here.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. During his confirmation of the Senate Finance Committee, testifies as the candidate of Donald Trump to be Minister of Health and Human Services
CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
THis morningRobert F. Kennedy, Jr. During a confirmation hearing session for the Senate Finance Committee, since the legislative body weighs whether he approves his appointment as secretary of health and human services, who supervises and Medicaid services, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control.
Predictable, Kennedy pulled fire for his old advocacy against vaccination. Although he described himself as “pro-vaccine” during the hearing, many senators were not convinced. Various senators, including Ron Wyden, D-Or., And Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Criticized His involvement In an outbreak of measles in Samoa in which more than 80 non -vaccinated people died. Warren also criticized Kennedy for refusing the referral costs he receives from current lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies about vaccinal claims.
Abortion was also a major problem in the hearing, in which politicians from both parties tried to get clarity about Kennedy’s position about abortion and other reproductive care. Republican senators raised questions about the FDA regulation of abortion drugs Mifepristone and his dedication to the policy of the Trump on abortion. “I serve on the pleasure of the president,” Kennedy told Senator James Lankford Rep.-Okla … “I will implement his policy.”
You can read our entire live blog of today’s hearing here and make a bookmark for the link, because we will follow tomorrow for Kennedy’s second confirmation hearing, this time for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The timing of the final mood is not yet clear.
In a week of chaos and Trump’s attempts to freeze financing, scientists fear critical medical research
Illustration by Yunjia Yuan for Forbes; Photos by getty images: Andrew Harnik; Simonen; Javier Zayas; Alexandrmoroz; Vicente Méndez; John M Lund
LAst Wednesday, around 13:30 Pacific Time, Esther Choo, a professor in Emergency Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University, received an e -mail that was canceled the NIH study. Within a few hours, the word of NIH, who met cancellations in the social platform -bluesky about the social platform, causing fear and fear of scientists, because it became clear that those cancellations were part of the “break” of President Trump in in Meetings and communication and all stages of scientific proposals in the subsidies involved assessment process.
The NIH is the crown jewel of American scientific research and invests most of its $ 47 billion budget on medical research. Without the NIH meetings, known as studies sections, the agency cannot revise subsidies and therefore cannot do research prizes. These funds are crucial to help researchers study cancer (the budget of the National Cancer Institute, with $ 7 billion, is the largest among nih institutions), Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes and opioid addiction, among numerous health problems. Almost every major university or medical institution – from Johns Hopkins University to Massachusetts General Hospital – relies on federal subsidies to finance research.
“Many people are in the dark,” said Rebeca Burdine, a Princeton Professor or Molecular Biology, said Forbes. “That’s where you see the panic because we just don’t know.”
On Monday, ACTING NIH director Matthew Memoli issued a memo in which it is clarified that clinical tests are underway at the NIH and the funded institutions, Laboratories can buy ‘necessary supplies’ for research that dates from Trump and meetings with With regard to investigation of 20 January can also continue. The memo was unclear about what would happen to subsidies, but the NIH, in a subsequent E -mail statement that confirmed the details in that memo, stated: “No new studies are being launched at the moment.”
It soon became clear that Trump’s efforts to stop funds were not only about health and science, because the White House all federal subsidies and loans in a Memo of the Office of Management and Budget. The Memo called on each agency to do an assessment to ensure that his subsidies and loans fit in with the executive orders of Trump, which, among other things, want to ban all diversity, fairness and inclusion efforts. On Tuesday, a federal court granted an administrative stay in a case that freeze Trump’s financing, with a hearing for Monday.
The issues that are going on goes much further than healthcare – by freezing funds, Trump tried to claim the power over the federal wallet and to fundamentally transform the relationship between the president and the congress. On Wednesday, Omb withdrew the freezing of federal financing into a new memo.
Biotech and Farma
The FDA approved monthly maintenance doses for a drug from Alzheimer’s, Called Leqembi, from the Japanese Eisai and Biogen. Patients with early Alzheimer’s can receive the maintenance doses after 18 months after getting biweekly. A phase 2 clinical study showed that the doses could be spread to the drug after the first year of a year and a half, while the brain still considered the brain as a characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease to gather. The drug had received standard approval from the FDA in 2023, but its growth had been slow, partly because of the time and effort needed to get more than 100 injections per year.
Public Health and Hospitals
An outbreak of tuberculosis in Kansas has become the largest registered outbreak of the disease in the United States since the mid -1950s. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment said that this year it had registered 67 active matters this year. Health officials said that the general risk for the public, even in the field of the outbreak, remains ‘very low’. TB is treated with antibiotics in the course of four to nine months.
Deal of the Week
Rad AI raised $ 60 million at a rating of $ 525 million under the leadership of Digital Health Investor Transformation Capital – only seven months after the previous round led by Khosla Ventures. The generative AI platform was not yet planning to collect more funds (it has now collected a total of $ 140 million), but transformation wanted to have missed the last time, also founder and CEO Doctor Gurson told Forbes.
There are around 30,000 radiologists in the United States, and they spend an excessive amount of time writing more than 100 reports a day about the images of patients. “You are really burned out because it is non-stop boring work,” said co-founder and chief product officer Jeff Chang. To alleviate the burden, Gurson, a 47-year-old serial entrepreneur, and Chang, a 41-year-old radiologist who was once the youngest in the country (he started at the age of 13), worked together to start Rad AI in 2018. It was very early days for generative AI, and Gurson and Chang brainstormed with their first customers about how to build a product to help radiologists.
Their main product, called Rad Ai Omni, relies on an algorithm to automatically generate impressions of radiology reports based on findings that are tailored to every radiologist. Another product helps to follow and follow results. Early in space, the startup gave a lead because it built up these offers to increase productivity and reduce errors, Gurson said. “Nobody thought we could automate the print section,” he said.
With the new funds, Rad Ai is planning to speed up his rollout in the US and to look at foreign expansion. “At the moment there is so much demand for the products we offer,” he said.
What we read
Allegedly CDC immediately stops working with the WHO.
A startup claimed that his device could heal cancer. Than Patients started dying.
The Sackler family reached a new one $ 7.4 billion settlement About the opioid crisis.
Trump Pardon’s abortion clinic demonstrators Prior to March for life.
UnitedHealth Group took the successor to the killed United Healthcare CEO.
While states vary on immigration, hospitals say they Patients will not remove.
The FDA approved Ozempic for the treatment of patients with chronic kidney disease.