Coverage
120 stories on the Health beat — every filing on this desk, newest first.
A new survey indicates that most rural voters supporting the Make America Healthy Again movement believe President Donald Trump's health care policies have not improved the well-being of their communities. The findings come from a national…
State data indicates that hundreds of thousands of lawfully present immigrants are at risk of losing government health coverage beginning October 1. This development suggests the impact of Medicaid changes in President Donald Trump’s 2025…
An investigational combination therapy from Eli Lilly produced significant weight loss in a mid-stage study, though high rates of participants stopping the treatment may raise questions about its tolerability. The company tested pairings…
The Make America Healthy Again movement, originally formed around mistrust of the health system and corporate influence, now includes major industry leaders promoting their work under its banner. This shift was evident at the MAHA Summit…
A growing number of congressional lawmakers are urging the Trump administration to reconsider a federal rule set to take effect next month. Critics warn the regulation will prevent Americans from obtaining prescription medicines from…
Beam Therapeutics has sued a former scientist and a Chinese biotech firm, alleging theft of intellectual property. The Cambridge, Mass.-based gene-editing company claims its former employee, Zi Jun “Emma” Wang, accessed electronic…
Eric Cantor, a former Republican majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, will be the next chief executive officer of PhRMA. The lobbying group announced the appointment on Tuesday.
Merck has stopped supplying Recarbrio, an antibiotic used to treat serious infections, to the U.S. market. The decision was announced earlier this month without a public explanation from the company.
A dispute over medical terminology has emerged in Pennsylvania following the reporting of two measles-associated deaths in Lancaster. On Aug. 25, local officials relayed the coroner's office position that one individual died "with measles…
Novo Nordisk has agreed to pay up to $1.3 billion to license and develop Nanexa's drug delivery technology, according to The Wall Street Journal. The agreement is designed to reduce the frequency with which patients must inject obesity and…
The CEO of Reproductive Futures stated that FDA commissioner nominee Heidi Overton is ignoring scientific evidence regarding mifepristone, a key abortion medication. Overton appeared before the Senate health committee on Thursday to answer…
Eli Lilly has received approval for a once-weekly insulin injection. In a separate legal development, a federal jury in California found that Eli Lilly breached a contract with Nektar Therapeutics regarding the co-development of the…
A former CDC investigator on the 2001 anthrax letters case has questioned whether the United States is prepared for a similar biological threat today. Twenty-five years after the initial attacks, the author argues that reviewing the public…
The Medicines Patent Pool has signed sub-licensing agreements with 11 manufacturers to produce generic versions of Roche's influenza treatment, Xofluza. The moves are designed to prepare for pandemic scenarios by expanding access to the…
Heidi Overton, President Trump's nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration, offered few personal opinions during her Senate confirmation hearing. Overton, a preventive medicine physician from rural New Mexico, faced questions on…
An Indonesian court struck down a legal provision that permitted patent evergreening, a strategy where pharmaceutical companies file new patents for minor changes to existing medicines to delay generic competition. The ruling marks a…
Heidi Overton, the Trump administration's nominee for Food and Drug Administration commissioner, will appear before a Senate committee at 10:30 a.m. for a confirmation hearing. If confirmed, the 37-year-old preventive medicine physician…
Heidi Overton, the presidential nominee for the Food and Drug Administration, plans to prioritize speed and efficiency at the agency to compete with China's accelerating biotechnology sector. In an opening statement prepared for her…
A planned executive order that would have significantly expanded White House influence over National Institutes of Health grants is likely not moving forward. This development was reported by one person familiar with the decision, who was…
STAT's AI Prognosis newsletter argues that the widespread fear of artificial intelligence causing human extinction is too far removed from the current state of health care AI to be discussed in the same breath. The publication, which…
The short version: Novo Nordisk may have secured an additional financial advantage from its agreement with the Trump administration to lower obesity drug costs for seniors. This potential benefit sits on top of the existing deal. An MFN…
Heidi Overton is nominated to lead the Food and Drug Administration, a regulatory body tasked with approving medicines and ensuring product safety. The short version is that she faces a critical test at her confirmation hearing, where she…
The federal government has updated its drug approval rules to allow human-based research methods to replace animal testing in many cases. This is the second major push by the Department of Health and Human Services this year to shift…
The short version is that federal lawmakers are pushing back against a proposal to place political appointees in charge of approving scientific research funding. This plan would create a commission with the power to sign off on every grant…
The short version is that Eli Lilly and Company secured approval for a breast cancer treatment combination. In plain terms, a drug combination is a therapeutic strategy that pairs two distinct agents to treat a disease, often aiming to…
Two leading radiopharmaceutical companies are merging in a transaction valued at at least $1.65 billion. This move follows a surprise FDA rejection for one of the firms. In plain terms, radiopharmaceuticals are medicines that deliver…
A rare childhood disease called Sanfilippo syndrome now has an approved gene therapy, the first one in the disease's history. Gene therapy, in plain terms, is a treatment that introduces corrected genetic material into a patient's cells to…
Researchers have identified a rare genetic variant tied to a 25-fold increase in lung cancer odds among people who have never smoked, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science. A genetic variant is a small, inherited…
Pennsylvania has now reported a fourth death connected to measles. The latest was an 18-year-old resident of Mifflin County, in the center of the state, who died from acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, a rare and severe neurological…
A failed clinical trial wiped nearly $30 billion from Novartis's market value this week after shares fell 11% in a single session, erasing all the gains the stock had made since the start of the year. The drug that failed, del-desiran, was…
Pharmaceutical and cosmetics companies across Europe may be off the hook for the largest share of a continent-wide water cleanup effort, after a legal adviser to the EU's top court recommended striki
Federal regulators approved a drug on Friday for spinal muscular atrophy, a rare neurological condition where the nerve cells that signal muscles to move gradually deteriorate. The drug, Isembyld, is the first approved therapy to directly…
A breast cancer drug failed its largest clinical test, a result that could limit how widely the medicine is prescribed. First-line therapy is the term for the initial drug doctors try after a patient's cancer advances, before other options…
States can now sort Medicaid recipients into health-severity tiers when deciding who is too ill to work or volunteer, under guidance released this week by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Medical frailty, in plain terms, is…
The scientific leader of a genetic medicines division has changed. Genetic medicines, in plain terms, is the field of therapies that act on DNA or RNA to treat disease at its source. Alloy Therapeutics is the company gaining a new leader…
A federal subsidy is government money that reduces what a person pays each month for health coverage. The Trump administration says it will send $500 refund checks to nearly 1 million Americans enrolled in Affordable Care Act health plans…
A group of drugs that transformed survival rates for children with liver cancer have been found to cause genetic mutations in healthy liver tissue that speed up how fast the organ ages. The drugs are platinum-based chemotherapy agents, a…
Vaccine mandates, the laws specifying which inoculations children must receive before they can enroll in public school, have become a prominent issue in at least five midterm races ahead of November's elections. Republican candidates in…
A federal health research agency is committing $62.7 million to develop artificial intelligence systems designed to help manage heart failure, where heart failure means the heart muscle can no longer pump enough blood to meet the body's…
When physician credentials, artificial intelligence in the exam room, and surrogacy generated enough reader mail to warrant a public reply, STAT published the letters. The health and life sciences publ
A late-stage trial for an experimental Angelman syndrome drug came back negative this week, dealing a major blow to patients and to the company behind it. Late-stage, in clinical testing, means the final ro
A closely watched drug for a common heart disease risk factor has failed in its biggest test. Pelacarsen, developed by Novartis, targets Lp(a), a particle made from lipids and proteins whose elevated concentrations in the blood raise the…
A network split is forcing some cancer patients in Boston to choose between their doctor and their insurance coverage. A network, in plain terms, is the list of hospitals and specialists an insurer has agreed to pay for directly. Starting…
Two people who received genetically engineered pig kidneys have now gone on to receive human donor organs, a result that suggests a temporary animal transplant does not block a conventional one later. A xenograft, the medical term for a…
Some medical devices that use artificial intelligence to make care decisions can now reach patients before their makers have received marketing authorization, the formal federal clearance that normally must precede any commercial sale of a…
Vaccination guidance for the coming winter respiratory season is now available for both medical professionals and their patients. The short version: a coalition of professional organizations representing pediatricians, family physicians…
Voluntary drug pricing agreements between the White House and midsize biotechnology companies are unlikely to change what most Americans pay for their prescriptions, at least in the near term, analysts say. The agreements follow a…
An internal review, meaning an investigation the organization runs into its own conduct using a committee it appoints, has cleared the American Diabetes Association of censoring five members ejected from its scientific conference in New…
A class of prescription medications known as GLP-1 drugs is upending how employers pay for their workers' health coverage. STAT's Health Care Inc. newsletter, written by reporter Bob Herman, describes
Buying a patent application, a government filing that claims rights to an invention before the patent is officially issued, may be enough to cross the line into anticompetitive behavior. That question sits at the center of a federal…
Boston-area researchers have found that roughly one in four NFL players in their study sample had CTE at the time of death. CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, is a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated concussions and the…
A treatment for ATTR-CM, a heart condition, failed its clinical trial on Friday, and the fallout reached beyond the company that ran the test. AstraZeneca disclosed that its drug Wainua did not
A new weekly injection for polycythemia vera, a rare chronic blood cancer that causes the body to overproduce red blood cells and thicken the blood, won Food and Drug Administration approval on Friday. The drug is called rusfertide…
A drug designed to interrupt a specific inflammation signal in the body reduced measurable signs of that inflammation in a midstage clinical trial. Biomarkers, the proteins used to track whether inflammation is active inside a patient…
Two unvaccinated people in Pennsylvania died from measles-associated causes, and the federal response began with a phone call. Federal assistance is when the national government steps in with resources or coordination to help a state…
The Food and Drug Administration approved a life-extending treatment for advanced pancreatic cancer on Wednesday, the first drug designed to block a genetic driver of the disease. A genetic dri
Two new trials point to a potential tiebreaker for patients caught in the gray zone on heart disease risk. A coronary artery calcium scan, meaning a low-dose CT image that detects calcified plaque inside the arteries near the heart, can…
A newer shingles vaccine has been linked to reduced rates of heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure in research the study team describes as a natural experiment, meaning it draws on real-world vaccination patterns rather than randomly…
A chief medical officer is the executive who decides how a drug company designs its clinical trials, interprets the data that comes back, and makes the medical case to regulators. Spruce Biosciences has filled that seat, hiring Adrian…
The federal government has taken a formal step toward reconsidering how children's vaccines are recommended in the United States, though no existing recommendations have changed. That step is a request for information
A gene therapy has received clearance for use in American patients, one of at least two approvals the Food and Drug Administration processed in a short stretch this week. Gene therapy, in p
Hospitals and health systems are deploying chatbots powered by large language models to search and summarize patient medical records, a technology shift driven by how bloated those records have become. A large language model is software…
Fearmongering (spreading exaggerated alarm to shift behavior, rather than to inform a decision) is what some federal leaders are doing on childhood vaccines, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics now argues. The AAP is the…
Federal regulators are looking at whether the nation's largest electronic health records company violated competition law. Antitrust law, which bars dominant companies from using their market position to lock out rivals, is the framework…
Multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, now has a new oral treatment approved by U.S. regulators. The Food and Drug Administration cleared Zenbexus, made by Bristol Myers Squibb, as the first drug in a new class called CELMoDs and the first drug…
Georg Schett, the German scientist who spent five years demonstrating that CAR-T therapy, a treatment that engineers a patient's own immune cells to target and eliminate the source of disease, can reset the immune system in autoimmune…
Separating the MMR vaccine into individual shots is likely to produce more missed doses and more sick kids. The MMR is a single injection covering measles, mumps, and rubella. It is now the target of a White House executive order
A manufacturing problem flagged by U.S. regulators has halted a radiopharmaceutical, a cancer therapy that works by delivering radioactive isotopes directly to tumor cells. The drug's maker, ITM Isotope Technologies Munich SE, had already…
People covered by Medicaid, the joint federal-state health insurance program for low-income individuals, face new enrollment rules that take effect in 2027. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 introduced those changes on what the law…
A major federal science agency is moving to restrict one of its most sought-after early-career grants, called a K99/R00 award, which is a two-part fellowship that funds postdoctoral training and then a researcher's first years running an…
Two medicines used to treat Pompe disease, a rare inherited muscle disorder caused by the abnormal buildup of glycogen in the body's cells, are running short across the United States and Europe. Sanofi, which manufactures both drugs, has…
A chief medical officer (the executive who owns a company's clinical strategy and translates scientific findings into decisions the broader organization can act on) has taken a new position. Teresa Nunes, who held that title at Allucent…
A Senate committee voted last week to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after he invoked the Fifth Amendment, the constitutional protection against self-incrimination, during hearin
A cancer treatment rejected twice by federal regulators has now won approval. The Food and Drug Administration granted accelerated approval to Tudriqev, a drug made by the biotech company Replimune, for patients with advanced melanoma…
Personalized CRISPR therapies, gene-editing treatments built around one patient's specific mutation rather than a disease shared by millions, just lost one of their early backers. Aurora Therapeutics has scrapped its lead program and laid…
Pharmaceutical companies do not owe patients a legal duty to speed up development of a safer drug simply because a less safe version is already on the market. That concept, called a "duty to innovate," was at the center of a case brought…
A federal law requires pharmaceutical manufacturers to sell discounted medicines to specific hospitals and clinics. That discount mechanism, the foundation of the 340B Drug Pricing Program, is now being reshaped. The Trump administration…
A Senate committee vote, meaning a panel decision that sends nominees to the full chamber for final confirmation, moved two of President Trump's public health choices forward on Thursday. Erica Schwartz, nominated to lead the Centers for…
Five researchers were removed from a major diabetes organization's annual scientific conference, a once-a-year gathering where clinicians present new findings and debate the direction of clinical practice, in New Orleans last month. More…
Prescription drug spending is rising, and the pharmaceutical industry's main lobbying organization is running a campaign to change how reporters describe it. Lobbying, at its most basic, means paid outreach
The person who sets a drug company's clinical strategy and oversees how patient trials are designed is called the chief medical officer. Rigel Pharmaceuticals has filled that seat, hiring Alison Hannah as executive vice president and chief…
An FDA advisory panel voted Friday to allow compounding pharmacies to produce epitalon while narrowly recommending against the same permission for emideltide. Compounding pharmacies, for those unfamiliar with the term, are facilities…
The FDA is currently investigating six separate cyclospora outbreaks, and only one has so far been linked to a specific food: shredded iceberg lettuce. Cyclospora is a pathogen that causes cyclosporiasis, an intestinal illness that reached…
The question of who can legally obtain testosterone, a hormone medication prescribed for a range of medical conditions, surfaced this week in STAT's Morning Rounds, a free daily newsletter covering health and medicine. The newsletter…
A lawsuit filed by a former health-system employee claims she lost her job after raising concerns about how artificial intelligence was being used in patient care. The legal term for that kind of case is a whistleblower
The price of selling a branded medicine in Germany may soon rise sharply for drug companies. German lawmakers passed a bill that would increase the mandatory rebate, the fixed discount manufacturers must return to the country's public…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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
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
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…
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…