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Hello! Hope your weekend was a blissful one. Today, we talk about AbbVie’s outsize marketing spend, see how GLP-1s are impacting cancer rates, and more.
The need-to-know this morning
- Eli Lilly said it will acquire Morphic Holding, a biotech developing a treatment for inflammatory bowel disease. Lilly will pay about $3.2 billion to buy the Waltham, Mass.-based company. That translates to $57 per share, a premium of roughly 79% from Morphic’s Friday closing price.
- Ideaya Biosciences reported results from a mid-stage study showing a 39% tumor response rate for its experimental cancer drug IDE397 in patients with bladder and lung cancer with an MTAP deletion.
- HilleVax said its experimental vaccine against the norovirus failed to reduce severe gastrointestinal events compared to a placebo in infants enrolled in a mid-stage clinical trial. The company intends to discontinue development of the vaccine, called HIL-214, in infants but may explore further development in adults.
AbbVie dramatically outspent rivals in drug promotion
AbbVie spent an eye-popping $145.7 million last year on marketing to health care providers, a STAT analysis of government data shows. This hefty expenditure, the highest of any pharma company since 2017, includes payments for consulting, speaking fees, travel, and meals for doctors.
In contrast, similar-sized companies like Pfizer and Merck spent significantly less, around $32 million and $22 million, respectively. Here’s why: AbbVie is losing its monopoly on Humira — so the company is now heavily promoting other drugs in its arsenal. AbbVie’s marketing dollars went largely toward paying doctors to speak at events, and millions of meals for health care providers.
“It boggles the mind when you see numbers that high just for marketing and promotion,” one Yale professor studying these trends told STAT’s Nicholas Florko and J. Emory Parker.
More legal wrangling over Gilead HIV pill patents
The Biden administration has appealed a decision in which a federal court jury last year sided with Gilead Sciences over the rights to a pair of groundbreaking HIV pills — and at least $1 billion in royalties may be at stake.
At issue is a battle over patents for Truvada and a newer, upgraded version version called Descovy — two highly effective and lucrative medications — as well as the role played by the federal government in making it possible to prevent transmission of a highly infectious disease that plagued the American public for decades.
After a brief trial in May 2023, a jury found Gilead did not infringe on patents held by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and that those patents were invalid. The judge in the case later set aside the jury finding that CDC patents were not infringed. The appeal filed by the U.S. Department of Justice seeks to further nullify the jury finding that the patents were invalid.
GLP-1s reduce risk of 10 obesity-related cancers
GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy are better at reducing the risk of 10 obesity-related cancers compared to other diabetes drugs like insulin and metformin, a new study shows. Notably, compared to patients taking insulin, patients taking GLP-1s saw a 65% decreased risk of gallbladder cancer, a 59% decreased risk in pancreatic cancer, and a 53% decreased risk in hepatocellular carcinoma — though the study did note a slightly higher risk for kidney cancer. The study, published in JAMA Network Open, looked at over 1.6 million type 2 diabetes patients from 2005 to 2018.
“Given the obesity epidemics we have in the U.S., the Western world and in developing countries as well, this has the potential to be an extremely important intervention to prevent cancer from a public health perspective,” an oncologist not involved in the study told STAT’s Rohan Rajeev.
Judge rules against Boehringer in Medicare negotiation
A federal judge rejected Boehringer Ingelheim’s challenge to the Medicare drug pricing negotiation program last week, marking another legal setback for the pharmaceutical industry. The company had argued the law was unconstitutional and that Medicare officials violated procedural laws — but the judge dismissed these claims.
This follows similar rulings against other pharma giants like AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, STAT’s Rachel Cohrs Zhang writes. The judge noted that Boehringer Ingelheim could leave the Medicare and Medicaid programs to avoid the negotiation, dismissing its argument of being trapped. The decision strengthens the Biden administration’s position as Medicare approaches its deadline to finalize price negotiations for the first 10 drugs.