Good morning, Jason Mast here filling in for the one and only Ed Silverman. We’re here in STAT’s Brooklyn outpost today, where everyone’s gazing across the East River to see whether Pfizer’s former headquarters will — quite literally, quite alarmingly — crumble to the ground. It does appear things are more stable than yesterday, which will hopefully give us time and the breathing space to focus on today’s headlines. …
The FDA approved a new kidney disease drug from Vera Therapeutics, STAT states. The drug, called Trutakna, is designed to treat IgA nephropathy, a condition in which immune antibodies build up in the kidneys. It is one of several drugs now entering or nearing the market for the disease. Vera will charge $425,000 annually before customary insurance discounts and rebates.
U.K. officials are nearing a drug-pricing deal with AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo to assure access to a life-extending breast cancer drug, Bloomberg reports. The deal would allow certain women in England and Wales to receive Enhertu, an antibody-drug conjugate that has been shown to extend survival for some patients by around six months and is widely available elsewhere. The U.K. drug-pricing regulator had previously deemed the medicine not cost-effective — though that was before the U.K. changed some of its drug-pricing metrics as part of a trade deal with the Trump administration.
