Meghana Keshavan , 2025-04-17 13:39:00
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Morning. Today, we talk about Arkansas making a bold move to curb PBM power, analyze Trump’s executive order in regards to drug prices, and more.
A big GLP-1 advance for Eli Lilly
A daily pill from Eli Lilly helped patients with type 2 diabetes improve their blood sugar and shed weight, the company said this morning, late-stage results that could propel the next-generation treatment onto the market.
The drug, orforglipron, produced results that were nearly comparable to the benefits of available GLP-1 drugs, which are primarily weekly injectable treatments. Observers were closely awaiting the results of this trial, as it’s the first Phase 3 study of the therapy to read out.
Lilly said it plans to submit orforglipron to regulators as a weight-lost treatment this year, and apply for a type 2 diabetes indication next year.
Trump budget draft proposes NIH consolidation and 40% spending cut
The National Institutes of Health, which has long pursued and funded research that has helped fuel industry innovation, is on the chopping block, according to a draft Trump administration budget that surfaced yesterday.
The budget proposes a massive $20 billion cut for the NIH in 2026 — roughly a 40% reduction — and a sweeping consolidation, from 27 institutes and centers to just eight.
Any final budget plan will require congressional approval. But experts who reviewed the proposal said, if enacted, the budget would devastate the nation’s science infrastructure.
Arkansas adopts a first-in-the-nation PBM law
Arkansas has enacted a first-of-its-kind law that bars pharmaceutical benefit managers from operating both retail or mail-order pharmacies, aiming to curb conflicts of interest blamed for inflating drug prices and shuttering independent pharmacies.
The law targets industry giants like CVS, Cigna, and United Health, whose PBMs control nearly 80% of U.S. prescriptions and have been accused by the FTC of price manipulation and anti-competitive practices, STAT’s Ed Silverman reports.
“This legislation keeps pharmacy benefit managers from engaging in crony capitalism and protects Arkansas patients and taxpayers,” Rep. Jeremiah Moore, who co-sponsored the bill, said in a statement. “No longer will they be able to pay themselves thousands of percentage points above the cost of medications, while paying their competitors at or below cost.”
Trump revives drug pricing playbook, with tweaks
President Trump’s new executive order aimed at lowering drug price revisits many of his first-term drug pricing ideas, blending old ambitions with new goals as well as some pro-industry concessions.
It nods to lowering costs through imports and generics but notably backs the industry’s gripes about the so-called “pill penalty,” STAT’s John Wilkerson writes.
While the the order emphasizes the importance of transparency and PBM reform, much of it lacks detail — raising more question in some cases than answers.
Cell therapy for Parkinson’s shows promise
Two new clinical trial papers in Nature mark a promising advance in stem cell-based therapies for Parkinson’s disease, demonstrating safety and early signs of dopamine production from transplanted dopaminergic neuron progenitors.
The studies, according to STAT columnist Paul Knoepfler, used both embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells, and showed modest effects — but raised key questions around cell dosing, engraftment, and the tradeoffs between autologous and allogeneic approaches, particularly with immunosuppression.
“Keeping it real, we have to figure politics into any predictions about future stem cell therapies,” Knoepfler writes. “Such funding could be at risk moving forward with the apparent increase in political sway within the FDA.”
When a U.S. vet gets laid off from the FDA
Karen Hollitt saw it coming. A military veteran with two decades of service and a doctorate in education, she’d clawed her way out of rural poverty, trauma, and war zones to land a stable job at the FDA. But she got swept up in a wave of layoffs targeting federal workers under President Trump’s restructuring plans — a loss that jolted her PTSD out of remission, STAT’s Eric Boodman writes.
“I don’t ever want to feel like something’s owed to me,” she said. “It’s just the way politicians use veterans as pawns. You know, they say they care about us and our health care, and then they cut us from the workforce. Or they cut the people that work for the VA. How are they supposed to care for us if there’s no people there to care for us? It just feels like a big lie.”
More reads
- Pharma companies expected to absorb any tariff hit in short term, Reuters
- Novartis terminates phase 2 osteoarthritis trial testing ADAMTS-5 inhibitor, FierceBiotech