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Trump's pick to run Indian Health Service withdraws

President Trump's pick to run the Indian Health Service is no longer the nominee for the job, the Wall Street Journal reports. The President nominated Robert Weaver, a member of Oklahoma’s Quapaw tribe, to lead the $6 billion federal agency last year. But several stories by the Journal have raised questions about the candidate, including one that detailed Weaver's history of financial problems and another that suggested Weaver didn't accurately represent his work experience at a Missouri hospital.

FDA continues to crack down on kratom

The government’s crackdown on the herbal supplement kratom continues. The FDA says a Missouri-based company has recalled and destroyed a slew of diet supplements that contained kratom and has agreed to stop selling any products that contain kratom. Some kratom users argue that the supplement is a safe way to treat pain and wean off opioids, but the FDA says kratom itself is an opioid and that there’s no evidence it’s safe or effective for any medical use.

There will likely be more such recalls — the agency is encouraging all companies selling products with kratom to pull their products from the market “in the interest of public health.” Meanwhile, the CDC is investigating a salmonella outbreak spanning 20 states that’s tied to contaminated kratom.

Here's what health insurance coverage looked like last year

Nine percent of people nationwide didn’t have health insurance last year, according to data just released by the CDC that stretch through September 2017. That's not too different from the rate in 2016. But broken down by state, the uninsured rate was far higher in some areas than others. In Texas, nearly 20 percent of people were uninsured, compared to just under 5 percent in New York. The uninsured rate was lower among children — 5 percent of kids didn’t have health insurance, while 55 percent were covered by private plans and 42 percent were covered through public programs like CHIP.

Create, enhance, and elevate the patient experience

May 6-8 2018 in Boston, MA. The highly acclaimed Patient Experience Symposium brings together hospital executives, patient experience, and nurse leaders from around the nation. Conference program includes in-depth pre-conference workshops and sessions by visionary leaders including customer experience expert, Martha Rogers; former COO of Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Janet Porter; Chief Patient Experience Officer, University of Missouri Health Care, Kevin R. Gwin; Chief Experience Officer, Northwell Health, Sven Gierlinger, and many more.

Register for The Patient Experience Symposium with code STAT100 to save $100.

Inside STAT: After a harassment scandal, OrbiMed is banking another billion

Two months after a sexual harassment scandal, biotech’s biggest investment fund is in the process of raising $1 billion from investors — and the founder at the center of the controversy is still a partner at the firm. Late last year, biotech financier Sam Isaly of OrbiMed said he’d retire after STAT reported that six former employees said he regularly harassed the firm’s female employees. But recent filings with the federal government list Isaly, who denied the charges, as OrbiMed’s manager. The firm and its founder are still negotiating his departure. The process stands in stark contrast to the fallout in other industries rocked by similar allegations in recent months. STAT’s Damian Garde has the details — read here.

FluMist gets a green light from experts

An expert panel that advises the CDC is recommending that FluMist — the flu vaccine that’s puffed into the nose with a sprayer — be used in the U.S. next flu season. The panel hasn’t recommended FluMist for the past two flu seasons because of concerns it didn’t protect against H1N1 viruses. The recommendation is a big win for FluMist’s maker, AstraZeneca, and a big relief for people in public health who see the vaccine as critical to flu response. The catch: The recommendation comes too late for the vaccine to play a significant part in next year’s winter vaccination program, because a lot of next season’s flu vaccine purchases have already been made. STAT’s Helen Branswell has more here.

Lab Chat: A gel designed to make cancer treatments more effective

The gel mixed with a chemo drug and an immune checkpoint inhibitor. (Zhen gu lab)

Scientists looking to make cancer therapies that combine chemotherapy and immunotherapy safer and more effective have come up with a new tactic to deliver those drugs: Stick them in a hydrogel, inject them into a tumor, and let the drugs kick in one after the other. In mouse models, the trick improved survival rates and reduced cancer recurrence. Here’s what biomedical engineer Zhen Ghu of the University of North Carolina told me about the technique, published in Science Translational Medicine.

What problem did you set out to solve?

Combination therapies of chemotherapy and immune checkpoint inhibitors are very promising cancer treatments, but the response rate is not that high. And because the treatment is given with a systemic IV infusion, it can cause some side effects when the immune cells attack normal cells. We wanted to enhance the efficacy and reduce the toxicity.

Tell me about the gel you designed.

The gel can be quickly formed by mixing a polymer solution and a crosslinker, which helps to form a [scaffold.] We loaded the scaffold with a chemotherapy drug and an immunotherapy antibody and injected it into the tumor. The scaffold breaks down in the tumor environment and releases the chemotherapy drug and then the immunotherapy antibody.