Purdue might settle

Purdue Pharma has (tentatively) agreed to a settlement for the thousands of lawsuits against it for the company’s role in the opioid crisis. Bankruptcy is involved, and the company — but not the Sackler family — would be dissolved. it still needs to be approved by the Purdue board — and the court. As Georgia is part of the lawsuit, Attorney General Chris Carr is evaluating the proposal as well.

New diabetes resources

The National Diabetes Prevention Program has unveiled a bunch of new resources for pharmacists looking to help fight diabetes — videos, printable brochures, a template to promote their services, and more.

Check them out at the NDPP’s site.

Redacting the evidence?

Did a judge hide evidence about the dangers of a drug? Legal documents obtained by Reuters seem to say so — and it’s part of a widespread issue of evidence being hidden from the public under the cover of “product secrecy.”

Judge Brian Cogan allowed the medical secrets contained in the documents to be kept out of public view. Reuters is able to report this confidential information now only after discovering filing errors that left some of it exposed.

Court secrecy has become pervasive even though, as a matter of law, court records are presumed to be public.

Flavored e-cig ban?

The FDA says it’s drawing up a plan to ban flavored e-cigarettes in the wake of A) a spike in teen use of the nicotine-delivery devices, and B) the emergence of a still-mysterious vaping disease that has already killed at least six people*.

* And caused thousands of writers and editors to wonder if the word “disease” is correct

Make like a tree

Dutch researchers at the Eindhoven University of Technology have cribbed from Mother Nature’s toolkit: They made artificial leaves that produce pharmaceuticals. Translucent material allows sunlight to hit microfluidic channels in the leaves, which triggers a chemical reaction.

The team put it to the test and found that it was able to successfully produce two different drugs: artimensinin, which is effective against malaria, and ascaridole, which is used against certain parasitic worms.

The idea is that leaves like that could be used in remote locations — making malaria treatment in the tropics, for example.

Longer lasting livers

It’s really that simple: NIH scientists have found a way to make a donated liver last 27 hours in a vat, rather than just nine. As anyone who has sat in traffic or seen their flight delayed knows, this could be a game-changer for people waiting for that transplant.

The trick: Cooling the liver to 6℃ in an airtight bag, and using antifreeze to keep it from being damaged by the cold. (Don’t try this at home.)

Stop us before it’s too late

Even as they race to create human embryos from stem cells, scientists (well, at least some of them) say there need to be legal guidelines in place.

For now, scientists say, these aren’t true embryos and lack the capacity to turn into a person. However, as similar research races forward in Europe and China it is raising questions about how close scientists really are to synthetically creating viable human embryos in their labs.

Cipro vs the heart

Cipro and its fluoroquinolone friends might have a dangerous downside: Tests show that patients who take those antibiotics “face a 2.4 times greater risk of developing aortic and mitral regurgitation, where the blood backflows into the heart, compared to patients who take amoxicillin.”

CAR-T vs heart disease

Mice with a particular kind of heart failure might be helped by CAR-T — the immunotherapy that’s being used to treat cancer. Instead of looking for proteins in cancer cells, it targets a protein present in scar-tissue cells in the heart, then clears out that scarring. The downside is that a full course of CAR-T treatment can cost $1 million, and few mice have that kind of money.