Coverage
34 stories on the Health beat — every filing on this desk, newest first.
The Food and Drug Administration, the federal agency that approves new prescription drugs, medical devices, and food safety standards before they reach consumers, is close to getting a new leader. The White House has received a short list o
A federal compensation process for Covid-19 vaccine injuries is about to get easier to access. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to begin compiling a formal list of conditions the government would presume were caused by Covid sh
Vertex Pharmaceuticals announced Monday it will acquire Crinetics Pharmaceuticals for $10 billion, or roughly $85 per share, adding a commercial rare-disease therapy and additional pipeline candidates to its portfolio. The deal centers on P
At VidCon — the largest annual social video creator conference, held this year in Anaheim, California — a striking share of programming was devoted to the mental health of content creators themselves, not the audiences scrolling past their
A federal judge has blocked the Colorado Prescription Drug Affordability Board from enforcing a first-in-the-nation upper payment limit on a blockbuster drug sold by Amgen, ruling that the
A federal judge has temporarily blocked Colorado from capping the price of Amgen's Enbrel, dealing a setback to state-level drug affordability efforts. Separately, a new Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services program will make obesity med
A Roche drug has established a new treatment standard for KRAS-driven lung cancer, STAT+ reported, marking a significant moment in an oncology target that has long resisted effective therapy. The news lands as the broader biotech sector's r
The pharmaceutical industry is losing one of Capitol Hill's more informed Democratic voices. Democratic lawmaker DeGette has lost her seat, and STAT News's D.C. Diagnosis newsletter — which covers the politics and policy of health and medic
Protillion Biosciences has hired Robert Hollingsworth as its chief scientific officer, according to the STAT+ executive-tracking column "Up and Down the Ladder." Hollingsworth previously held the same title at Shoreline Therapeutics and, be
Elevance Health has sued the U.S. government, alleging that federal regulators recalculated its Medicare Advantage quality ratings in a manner inconsistent with a recent court ruling — a me
A bipartisan group of Congressional lawmakers has written to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., pressing the Trump administration to compel Eli Lilly to restore federally mandated price breaks to hospitals enrolled i
Medicare has proposed paying hospitals average sales price minus 33.4% for drugs acquired through the 340B discount program, a sharp retreat from the current reimbursement rate of average sales price plus 6%. The proposal, released Thursday
Anthropic has released Claude Science, a version of its large language model configured specifically for scientific laboratories and pharmaceutical research operations, becoming the first large artif
Anthropic, the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company behind the Claude family of models, announced Tuesday that it will enter drug development — a significant step that tests whether AI systems can do genuine scientific work,
Anthropic has released Claude Science, an application that optimizes the company's artificial intelligence model for use in scientific laboratories, with pharmaceutical research operations as its primary commercial target. The San Francisco
Vijay Kumar, the acting director of the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Therapeutic Products — the unit that reviews cell and gene therapies for safety and approval — is leaving his post, according to an internal email obtained by
AstraZeneca agreed to pay $34 million to settle allegations brought by the Texas attorney general that the pharmaceutical company paid kickbacks to improperly influence prescriptions covered by Texas Medicaid. The settlement resolves claims
An Australian musician who broke her back while on tour in the United States spent nearly two weeks in an American hospital, then published an account of the experience. Her dispatch was described as surprisingly heartwarming — the medical
Edison Scientific, an artificial-intelligence drug-discovery company spun out of the nonprofit FutureHouse in late 2025 with $70 million in venture funding, has been engaged by the team behind Metsera to create new biotechnology companies.
The Trump administration is moving to restart the specialized LGBTQ+ option within the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, the federal crisis intervention hotline, but The Trevor Project — the nonprofit that helped pioneer the service for LGBT
BIO 2026, one of the largest annual gatherings of biotechnology companies and investors, brought delegations from dozens of countries to San Diego and delivered something the industry had not felt at several comparable events in the prior y
Delphia Therapeutics has appointed David Kerstein as its chief medical officer. Kerstein arrives with direct experience in the role, having previously served as CMO at both IDRx and Theseus Pharmaceuticals — a track record that matters in a
The Food and Drug Administration and Eli Lilly have permitted a single individual to receive retatrutide — Lilly's highly anticipated obesity drug candidate — through the FDA's compassionate use program, according to a scoop by STAT News jo
The annual international BIO conference in San Diego brought biotech and startup executives face-to-face with two forces reshaping the global drug industry: China's deepening capabilities in drug development and the early competitive signal
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has published a revised governing charter for its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the expert panel that shapes how vaccines are recommended for use across the United States. The n
Vaccine manufacturers at the BIO international conference in San Diego this week acknowledged a series of once-unthinkable policy shifts under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — including the cancellation of major mRNA vaccine contrac
A clinical trial set to begin next week in the Democratic Republic of the Congo will test Gilead Sciences' antiviral drug remdesivir and MappBio's monoclonal antibody MBP-134 against the Bundibugyo ebolavirus, the World Health Organization
A federal judge in Manhattan has temporarily blocked federal prosecutors based in Texas from obtaining the medical records of transgender patients treated at New York hospitals, ruling the
A federal judge ruled Monday that the U.S. government does not have the authority to prevent recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — the nation's largest food aid program — from using their benefits to buy candy, soda,
The scramble to compete in the GLP-1 weight loss drug market is intensifying. Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Amgen are developing products to take on Novo Nordisk's Wegovy and [Eli Lilly's Zepbound](/news/eli-lilly-cuts-340b-drug-disco
A class of super-potent synthetic opioids called nitazenes is spreading across the United States, adding a new and potentially more lethal layer to a [drug crisis that has already devastated families](/news/six-wounded-including-two-childre
Eli Lilly has begun eliminating mandated price breaks for a few dozen hospitals enrolled in the federal 340B drug discount program, making good on a threat it issued earlier this month after those facilities failed to provide comprehensive
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has recalculated the quality star ratings for 2026 Medicare Advantage plans, a new government memo shows, after the health insurance industry filed yet another legal challenge targeting its sco
A UCLA-co-led international study presented May 31 at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago reported that pancreatic cancer patients treated with daraxonrasib survived an average of 13.2 months — nearly double