Marietta sues Mallinckrodt

The city of Marietta is suing the maker of Acthar, because the company jacked up the price of the drug from $40 to over $39,000 for a single vial. Mallinckrodt’s defense is the usual: ‘It cost a lot to develop the drug.’

In a statement, the company said […] it has invested more than $600 million in clinical trials and other development programs for Acthar and offers significant discounts to many customers and a “range of free drug and commercial copay assistance options.”

Acthar was first released in 1952.

The U.S. Department of Justice is also suing Mallinckrodt over illegal kickbacks.

Techs: Get your worm!

Early-bird registration for TechU — the day of meeting, greeting, CE, and Topgolf — ends on Valentine’s Day (that’s this Friday, February 14).

Don’t miss out on the big event this May for Georgia’s pharmacy techs! Check out GPhA.org/techu for the details and sign up now!

If you miss out on early bird registration, don’t sweat it. It’s only $5 difference, and you know what they say: “The second mouse gets the cheese.”

Starting the thousand-mile journey

One way to encourage people to quit smoking: Give them a “goody bag” containing a two-week starter kit of nicotine replacement therapy along with educational material and contact info for Quitline.

The study was done by a dentist, and he suggested that primary care providers could be the ones to give away the bags, but it seems like there’s another healthcare provider that patients probably see a bit more often….

Methionine — it was you all along

It seems as if high levels of methionine (the amino acid common in meats and eggs) can ‘over-fuel’ T-cells, which is bad news for people with inflammatory and autoimmune disorders. Reducing methionine, researchers found, “altered the reprogramming of T cells, limiting their ability to cause inflammation in the brain and spinal cord.”

Of course, this was only in mice, but — as always — it’s an interesting step in an important direction.

One dose is all it takes

Of the HPV vaccine, that is. It seems (further tests to come) that a single dose may be as effective as multiple doses for preventing cervical cancer.

Which anti-depressant is most likely to work?

It may seem like a crapshoot, trying to figure out which drugs will work for whom. But there may be an answer in the brain’s “neural signature” — that is, which regions are active, based on electroencephalography scans.

So… give patients anti-depressants, let an artificial intelligence monitor their brain patterns, and eventually (say the researchers), the computer will be able to develop a model and accurately predict what’s likely to work for each patient.

Med supply worries

The virtual shutting down of China hasn’t yet impacted the supply of medication to the U.S. … at least that’s the official word for the moment. Of course, there are still plenty of drugs in pipeline, even if the supply has been temporarily stopped. The bigger issue will likely crop up in a few months.

As FDA commish Stephen Hahn put it, “The situation is fluid.”

Welcome to the Future: “Skin in the Game” edition

The article’s lede says it all:

A team of researchers in Canada have successfully trialled a new handheld 3D skin printer, which treats severe burns by ‘printing’ new skins cells directly onto a wound.

So forget about skin grafts — just print it using “a bioink based on fibrin – a protein involved in the clotting of blood – infused with mesenchymal stromal cells.”

Just … wow.

The Long Read: “No Profit, No Product” edition

“Coronavirus: The Latest Problem Big Pharma Won’t Solve”

[N]one of the four top vaccine companies has shown significant interest. It has been the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a government- and charity-funded initiative to accelerate the development of vaccines to respond to outbreaks, that has been leading the effort to find a vaccine for 2019-nCoV.