Pharmalittle: We’re reading about Lilly and Roche weight loss drugs, FDA and compounders, and more

Top of the morning to you, and a fine one it is. After a bleak, wintry stretch, a warm sun and blue skies are enveloping the Pharmalot campus, where our short person is sleeping in and the official mascots are dozing in their respective corners. As for us, we are engaged in the usual rituals — firing up the coffee kettle in order to brew a cup of stimulation (the choice today is cinnamon churro) and foraging for items of interest. On that note, here are a few tidbits to help you get started on your journey today, which we hope will be meaningful and productive. Meanwhile, do keep in touch — we enjoy secret dossiers and saucy tips. …

Three U.S. senators are calling on U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. to disclose what he and President Trump discussed with drugmakers during closed-door conversations, Bloomberg News says. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, and Bernie Sanders sent a letter dated March 10 to Kennedy, who is a longtime critic of the pharmaceutical industry. They accused him of attending “unofficial, million-dollar dinners” with industry executives at Mar-a-Lago. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America led a delegation of executives to the White House last month to ask Trump for changes to a Biden-era law that allows the government to negotiate certain drug prices. Executives, including the leaders of Pfizer and Eli Lilly, have said they attended private dinners at Trump’s Florida resort, with Kennedy present for some of them.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration told staff that re­view­ers of med­ical prod­ucts and in­spec­tors of man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties can­not take a buy­out of­fer cir­cu­lat­ed on Fri­day from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that would have pro­vid­ed as much as $25,000 in sev­er­ance, End­points News reports. The carve­outs for staff fund­ed by in­dus­try user fee dol­lars show the ex­tent to which the FDA and HHS are not tar­get­ing drug and de­vice re­view­ers in the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s wider gov­ern­ment staffing cuts. The move could help en­sure that all on­go­ing drug and de­vice re­view time­lines re­main on sched­ule. The agency email not­ed that “in­el­i­gi­ble po­si­tions” for the HHS buy­outs in­clude: “In­spec­tors and in­ves­ti­ga­tors in the Of­fice of In­spec­tion and In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­clud­ing po­si­tions with­in the Of­fice of Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tion; Re­view­ers in CDER, CBER, CDRH, CVM, CTP and OC of­fices; phys­i­cal se­cu­ri­ty po­si­tions; cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty po­si­tions; and all PHS Com­mis­sioned Corps Of­fi­cers.”

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