Recon: AbbVie strikes pricing pact with the White House; FDA seeks removal of suicide warnings from weight-loss drugs

• Pazdur warns that politics, ‘chaos’ are damaging FDA (STAT)
• Trump administration strikes deal with AbbVie to cut costs of certain drugs (CNN)
• Sentynl gets the first US approval for rare copper absorption disease (Endpoints)
• Congress' biotech panel pitches FDA policy upgrades to help performance (Endpoints)
• US FDA requests removal of suicide warnings from weight-loss drug labels (Reuters)
• Health secretary Kennedy appoints two new members to CDC's vaccine advisory panel (Reuters)

• Unitaid will provide funds for South Africa and Zambia to widen access to Gilead’s HIV prevention drug (STAT)
• Novartis licenses mysterious radiopharma asset from Chinese biotech (Endpoints)
• Health Canada Calls On Stakeholders To Shape Future Of Decentralized Trials (Pink Sheet)
• New UK Cost-Effectiveness Thresholds ‘Modest’ In Nature, Will Not Benefit All Drugs (Pink Sheet)

• Andreessen Horowitz alum maps out new VC firm with focus on AI, consumer health (STAT)
• At JPM, doctors’ darling OpenEvidence says it’s pursuing ‘medical super-intelligence’ (STAT)
• Illumina launches massive cell atlas to fast-track drug discovery (STAT)
• Marea takes drug for rare hormone disease acromegaly to Phase 2 (Endpoints)
• Who’s afraid of OpenAI? (Endpoints)
• Treg biotech Sonoma sheds staff after getting new CEO (Endpoints)
• Pretzel Therapeutics buys Rome and its ‘dark genome’ work (Endpoints)
• US FDA extends review of Travere’s drug for rare kidney disease (Reuters)

• Thermo Fisher wins contracts as pharma shifts production to US, CEO says (Reuters)
• Medtronic gets FDA clearance for smart insulin pen app (MedTech Dive)
• Inspire appoints Matt Osberg as CFO (MedTech Dive)
• Medtronic Pivots Back to Tuck-In M&A as Board, Balance Sheet And Pipeline Align (MedTech Insight)
• Medtech 2026: Complexity, Bottlenecks And Cybersecurity Among Key Regulatory Concerns (MedTech Insight)
• Medtech 2026: Is Investor Confidence Back? (MedTech Insight)

• I’m a dietitian. The new federal dietary guidelines will make my job harder (STAT)
• I’m a designer. The new food pyramid is outdated and confusing (STAT)

• Epic sues health information network over nearly 300,000 illegally accessed records (STAT)
• As they brace for bigger challenges, hospitals at JPM say they’re going ‘back to the basics’ (STAT)
• More people are surviving cancer than ever before, according to new report (STAT)
• Democratic-led US states sue over HHS grant conditions targeting transgender people (Reuters)
• Measles cases in South Carolina rise by 124 to 434, state health department says (Reuters)
• FDA is Open to the Idea of Possible Regulatory Flexibility for Cell and Gene Therapies on a Case-by-Case Basis…Where Appropriate (FDA Law Blog)