March 13, 2025

The need-to-know this morning

Drugmakers Mallinckrodt and Endo are merging in a deal valued at nearly $7 billion.

Exclusive

New biotech gives second life to once-toxic cancer drug

A new biotech, Cage Pharma, is raising money to develop a cancer drug with a troubled history, based on research out of lauded cancer researcher Bert Vogelstein’s lab.

The company has already received funding from Catalio Capital Management, whose cofounder Jacob Vogelstein is Bert Vogelstein’s son. It also hopes to raise up to $35 million in a Series A round, according to a person familiar with the plans.

The drug, 3-bromopyruvate or 3BP, is thought to disrupt cancer cell metabolism, starving cancer cells of the energy needed to survive and grow, but it's also highly toxic on its own. Vogelstein’s team has tried to find a way around that toxicity.

Read more from STAT's Allison DeAngelis.

politics

Key senator's support of RFK Jr. faces an early test

Multiple news outlets have reported that the CDC is planning to study whether there’s a link between vaccines and autism, posing a challenge to Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy's support of RFK Jr.

When Cassidy backed Kennedy’s confirmation, he said his support was contingent on commitments that Kennedy made to him, including promises to keep communication lines wide open and to consult him on vaccine policy.

And yet, when Cassidy was asked for his reaction to the news reports, he said he’s not even sure the agency truly intends to run such a study. A spokesperson for the senator said he was still requesting additional information.

regulation

Senators probe telehealth companies' links to Lilly, Pfizer

A group of senators sent letters this week to five telehealth companies that offer care through direct-to-consumer portals from Pfizer and Eli Lilly, pressing for answering on whether their contracts with the pharma companies could violate the federal anti-kickback statute.

The group of senators, led by Dick Durbin, had earlier similar letters to the Pfizer and Lilly, raising concerns that partnerships with telehealth companies could lead to over-prescribing.

The letters to telehealth companies asked how many of the prescriptions their providers wrote were for a medication from the associated pharma company. They also asked how many prescribers offer telehealth services under the pharma contracts, and whether Pfizer and Lilly knows their identities.

biotech

An outlier in biotech's prolonged downturn

Soleno Therapeutics is a rare biotech company whose stock has fared well despite the prolonged downturn in the rest of the industry.

My colleague Adam Feuerstein this morning takes a look at the company, which is awaiting an FDA decision on its treatment for Prader-Willi syndrome, a rare genetic disease that causes obesity and an insatiable desire to eat. vTFET-soleno-fares-well-despite-biotech-gloom

The clinical data supporting Soleno's treatment, called DCCR, aren’t pristine. But the treatment meets the criteria for “regulatory flexibility” that the FDA has used to clear drugs for rare diseases, and so it appears to have a very good chance of winning approval.