Good morning, everyone. Jason Mast here filling in for Ed. I learned today from TikTok — burgeoning hub of reliable information that it is — that you can deep-fry coffee beans instead of roasting them, to “soft and almost buttery and rich” results. You can also roast them with helium, because it conducts heat better than the air we breathe, although apparently the results are far less impressive. My coffee this morning is neither helium-blasted nor deep-fried, but it’s good to know the spirit of innovation is as alive and well in the world of beans as it is in Beantown. Or something. Here’s some news. …
South Africa was “bullied” into one-sided deals with Covid-19 vaccine suppliers, STAT reports. Vaccine contracts disclosed after a court case between the advocacy group Health Justice Initiative and the South African government showed the country often paid more than other groups for shots. It paid J&J $10 per dose, about 15% more than J&J charged the European Union. And it paid Pfizer $10 per dose, about 33% more than Pfizer charged the African Union. Despite those contracts, South Africa still often lost out. At one point during the pandemic, J&J was exporting to Europe millions of doses bottled at a South African plant, even as the country waited to receive the vast majority of the 31 million doses it ordered.
Johnson & Johnson’s efforts to push its blockbuster pulmonary arterial hypertension drug Opsumit into a new disease fell flat, Endpoints tells us. The Phase 3 trial in chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension, a similar disease, was halted by an independent data monitoring committee, which determined it was unlikely to succeed. The trial was an important one for J&J, as the main patent on Opsumit expires in 2025.