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Thursday, February 22, 2018
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Happy Thursday, everyone! I'm here to get you ahead of the day's news in science and medicine. For more of STAT, find us on
Twitter,
Facebook, and LinkedIn.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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What to read around the web today
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How fentanyl became the deadly street drug haunting America.
The Washington Post
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The keto diet, explained.
Vox
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Black lung disease comes storming back in coal country.
New York Times
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Thanks for reading! More tomorrow,
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