Good morning! On top of all the interesting sessions at the Summit yesterday, I ate a delicious cannoli. Also, I’ll say that the Summit is like heaven for people like me who want to drink all the drinks all at once: coffee, tea, seltzer, classic water, juice … I love it. More news to come during day two!
A former Trump official, a veteran vaccine developer, and more make news at STAT Summit
We’ve got a few stories to catch you up on the biggest news from day one of the Summit:
- While former President Donald Trump has backed off his ambitious plans to slash drug prices and repeal the Affordable Care Act, one of his former officials says that policy ideas are there. It’s just that enacting them could take messy fights. Read about what that former official, Joe Grogan, thinks Republicans will need to do if Trump wins back the White House.
- In a session with STAT’s Helen Branswell, former U.S. vaccine official Barney Graham (pictured above) echoed criticisms of U.S. efforts to contain the H5N1 bird flu virus in dairy cows. “The USDA and the CDC and the NIH are not sharing and coordinating,” he said. Read more of his thoughts on pandemic preparedness and vaccine hesitancy.
- After recent clinical success, Onward Medical CEO Dave Marver spoke about how the company is betting big on neurostimulation to improve the quality of life for people with paralysis. Read more about the company’s plans and how medical advancements have helped Sherown Campbell, a patient advocate who participated in a trial of Onward’s non-invasive spinal cord stimulator to boost hand and arm functioning.
- Speaking with STAT’s Nick St. Fleur, three researchers from this year’s class of Wunderkinds emphasized the importance of translating research into practical help for patients, as well as the need to address structural issues that make delivering care difficult. Read more about the work these scientists are doing to push science forward.
Kidney transplants from donors with HIV are ‘noninferior’ for those who already have it
For people who already have HIV, getting a kidney transplant from a donor who also had the virus is a “noninferior” option, according to a study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Out of 198 patients with HIV, half received a kidney from a deceased donor without HIV and half from one with HIV. People in both groups had similar rates of overall survival after one and three years, along with similarly low rates of graft loss and transplant rejection.
Historically, transplanting kidneys from donors with HIV has been banned in the U.S. It’s known to be safe, but research had yet to demonstrate that the results would be as good as transplanting a non-infected kidney, the NEJM study authors wrote.
With these results, the authors hope that people with HIV who need kidneys will have a new viable option, especially as this population typically waits longer for transplants and have higher mortality rates than those without the disease. “Above all, we have taken yet another step toward fairness and equality for persons living with HIV,” physician Elmi Muller wrote in an accompanying editorial.
The invisible medical groups behind telehealth’s GLP-1 ‘gold rush’
Over the past two years, dozens of telehealth companies have begun to offer GLP-1s, the blockbuster obesity and diabetes medications. What often goes undiscussed is that behind the screens, there are actual clinicians writing prescriptions to get people these drugs, including controversial compounded versions that aren’t approved by the FDA. Who are they?
Companies are rarely transparent about the medical groups doing this work. But an examination by STAT’s Katie Palmer of 81 companies that do disclose those partnerships found that just a handful of networks of doctors, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants are writing prescriptions for dozens of websites offering these drugs.
“In any emerging industry where there’s a lot of money to be made, you will find folks who positioned themselves to make hay while the sun shines,” said Rebecca Gwilt, a lawyer who advises digital health companies. Read more in STAT+ on how this booming sector of the industry is built, and what risks it poses for both clinicians and patients.
The best bits from day one of the STAT Summit:
It was a great first day at the Summit. One of my favorite parts was a video testimonial from Michelle Campbell and her daughter Shelby, who spoke about Shelby’s experience receiving gene therapy for beta thalassemia. Shelby is 8 — almost 9 — years old, and described her experience with gene therapy to the audience with the biggest, sweetest smile on her face. “It got harder each day,” she said, remembering how one of the side effects of treatment was that everything began to taste funny. She understands how the doctors took her cells far away and “changed them” to help her get better so she doesn’t need regular blood infusions anymore. (Read more about Shelby’s experience in Brittany Trang’s great profile from last year.)
Here are some other highlights from day one:
- One audience member asked former Trump staffer Joe Grogan about the Republican party’s “concept of a plan” for health care: “Is part of the plan to completely destabilize the FDA as a regulatory body?” Grogan had a one-word answer: “No.”
- STAT’s executive editor and co-founder Rick Berke is always ready to ask the hard questions. Yesterday, he repeatedly asked Bristol Meyers Squibb CEO Chris Boerner who he wants to see win the election. Boerner held firm in his answer: “We work with both sides of the aisle and transparently, both sides of the aisle have folks who get what we do in this industry, and both sides of the aisle have opportunities for us to continue to engage.”
- Sonia Vallabh spoke about her experience running a prion research laboratory at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard — work that she began after learning she inherited a mutation from her mother that causes genetic prion disease. She had so many thoughtful, poignant things to say, but this was perhaps my favorite quote: “No one just wakes up and feels, ‘I’m in a position to make a courageous decision and a courageous departure from precedent.’”
NYU study finds its 3-year med school is just as good!
In 2013, the first class graduated from a new, three-year accelerated program at the NYU School of Medicine — an alternative to its traditional four-year program. A study published this week in Academic Medicine compared the training performances of all 136 graduates from the first seven years of the accelerated program to the 681 traditional graduates at NYU in that period. Researchers concluded that, overall, students in the accelerated program performed similarly in school and in their internships as those in the traditional program.
There’s a major caveat here: All these students went to NYU, and the study itself was done by NYU researchers. But it’s an interesting thought — medical training is known to be grueling and expensive. If training can be shortened without sacrificing the education, it could be a game changer.
What we’re reading
- Medicare Advantage insurers ramped up use of technology to deny claims, Senate investigation shows, STAT
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More research links IUDs to breast cancer risk, New York Times
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New UK bill aims to legalize assisted dying for people who are terminally ill, AP
- Millions of pounds of meat are being recalled. Here’s what to look for in your fridge, NPR
- Ahead of public meeting, FDA signals flexibility in evaluating smoking cessation treatments, STAT