Desperate Biogen cuts Aduhelm price

Biogen: We’re pricing our Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm, at … 100 billion dollars!

World: Ha. No thank you.

Biogen: How about $56,000 a year?

World: Does it work?

Biogen: Um … maybe.

Europe: No thank you.

USA: We’ll think about it.

Biogen: Did I say $56,000? I meant, um — $28,200 a year! Yeah, that’s it!

USA: Will you throw in a first-round draft pick?

Biogen: Yes! And a free bottle of Flex Seal!

USA: Hmm … we’ll get back to you.

In 2022, earn some hot hot hot* certificates!

Do more for your patients, impress your friends, and fill those empty spots on your pharmacy wall: In 2022, earn yourself a certificate (and a nice chunk of CPE credit) through GPhA!

Each program gives 20 CPE hours (21 for MTM) in a combo of self-study and classroom work. Read about them all in details via GPhA.org/certificates.

Point-of-Care: Community Pharmacy-based Point-of-Care Testing Certificate Program

Learn to use effective, fast technology to aid your decision-making at the point of care to improve patient health — that’s why pharmacies are increasingly offering this public health service to promote prevention, early detection, and disease management.

APhA’s Pharmacy-Based Immunization Delivery certificate training program

This is an innovative, intensive, and practice-based continuing pharmacy education, based on national educational standards for immunization training from the CDC. This program is designed to prepare pharmacists with comprehensive knowledge, skills, and resources necessary to provide immunization services to patients across the life span.

MTM: APhA’s Delivering Medication Therapy Management Services

Learn a systematic approach for developing, implementing, delivering, and sustaining MTM services, from a marketplace overview to help implementing MTM services in your practice, and a review of the skills and knowledge you need.

Got questions about these or any of GPhA’s educational offerings? Drop a note to Teresa Tatum at ttatum@gpha.org any time, day or night, and she’ll help you out.

All CPE courses are accredited by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education.

* Certificates are room temperature; headline is figurative and should not be considered an actual thermal guarantee

Two weapons down

Don’t panic … but you can start preparing to panic.

As the January 8 and 16 Covid surges* loom, it seems that two of the antibody drugs used to treat Covid-19 patients don’t work against the omicron variant, cutting options significantly. (Read more below in “The Long Read.”)

The good news, of course, is that for vaccinated people, cases are generally mild — and there are two pill treatments on their way to FDA approval, both of which should work against Omicron.

* Two weeks after Christmas and New Year’s

Who’s suing pharma now?

A bunch of big payors. Centene, Humana, and several Blue companies are suing pharma manufacturers (Bristol Myers Squibb, Gilead, J&J, and Teva) over ‘blockaded competition’ in the HIV-drug market. Their claim: “that the companies illegally conspired to protect market exclusivity for widely-prescribed HIV drugs.”

Humana said that several of Gilead’s HIV medications cost less than $10 to produce, yet health plans have spent the better part of two decades paying thousands of dollars for a 30-day supply. Yearly sales of its HIV therapies exceed $13 billion, Humana said, which led to “enormous profits […] engineered through a comprehensive, illegal scheme to blockade competition.”

ALS cause found … and reversed

An international team of researchers says they’ve found what appears to be the cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (aka ALS, aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease*) — and have successfully treated it in mice.

Normally “in mice” is code for “get back to us in a decade,” but in this case the mechanism is the same: a buildup of a protein called TDP-43 which “causes motor neurons to degenerate and die by inhibiting mitochondrial production.”

That means — assuming the team’s conclusion is correct — even if their weapon doesn’t work, they’ve identified the right target.

By using an experimental molecule to break down TDP-43 in animals, the scientists were able to restore motor neuron activity, opening the door for possible drugs that can cure ALS in humans if found before the damage becomes too severe, the researchers said.

* Which, ironically, Lou Gehrig may not have had

Pfizer vaccine fails toddlers

Pfizer says a two-dose regimen of its Covid-19 vaccine doesn’t work for 2 to 5-year-olds. It will test whether a booster makes a difference, but it will not increase the amount of medication, which is about 10% of the adult dose.

Let the asthma-treatment wars begin

The FDA has approved Amgen/AstraZeneca’s Tezspire asthma treatment, which the companies have positioned to compete with Regeneron/Sanofi’s Dupixent.

For one, Tezspire’s Scrabble score is 19 points compared to Dupixent’s 18. But more useful, perhaps, is that unlike Dupixent, even patients with low levels of eosinophil can benefit from Tezspire.

Thanks, evolution

Oops: Seems that the main flu virus circulating this year — H3N2 — has changed since it was first detected. Now the current vaccines don’t match it, and its new name is “2a2.” So, yeah, that portends a worse flu season, although worse than what isn’t clear yet.

(On the plus side, at least the vaccine will still get the correct T cells working, so it does protect against severe illness and death.)

Putting the high in the runner’s high

Move over, endorphins. It turns out that the high that runners get after a long workout may not be from them after all. Following almost 20 years of work, Wayne State University neuroscientists say the real boost comes from endocannabinoids.

[S]cientists have long questioned the role of endorphins in the runner’s high sensation, in part because endorphins cannot cross into the brain through the blood-brain barrier, which protects the brain from toxins and pathogens. So endorphins are not likely to be the main driver for the beneficial effects of exercise on mood and mental state.

Endocannabinoids, on the other hand, “work on cannabinoid receptors throughout the brain and body” and cause the same kind of mental effects that have been attributed to endorphins, thanks to the chemical messenger anandamide — aka “the bliss molecule.”

The Long Read™: Covid Treatment edition

“Omicron is here. What are your treatment options if you get Covid-19?” A solid overview of the current state of Covid-19 treatments.