First, let me say thank you to all of the healthcare workers who are putting themselves at risk during this crisis.

As I noted last week, many of the crucial issues for our healthcare system will remain after we all get through this challenging period. In that regard, here’s a look at some noteworthy news from the past month:

• Sanofi discloses new data about insulin prices

• Excellent new academic research on list vs. net drug prices

• Three notable researchers overturn their earlier research on drug costs

• Amazon switches PBM vendors for some of its employees

Plus, we unveil the teaser trailer for Drug Channels Video!

P.S. Join the more than 9,000 followers of my daily links to neat stuff at @DrugChannels on Twitter. My recent tweets have highlighted such topics as:

• How GoodRx shares patients’ prescription data
• 2019 drug trend at Prime Therapeutics
• Controversy about the independent pharmacy market
• A new $5 generic mail order program, Medicare Part D reform
• Retail pharmacy’s future
• Job openings at Amazon 
• Frozen cookie dough
• And much more!

I have also been tweeting many under-the-radar stories about how the coronavirus affects drug channels.
Read more »

In 2006, I launched the Drug Channels website to explore the economics of the U.S. reimbursement and distribution system for prescription pharmaceuticals. More than 30,000 professionals in the pharmaceutical and related industries rely on Drug Channels for timely analysis and provocative, fact-based insights.

Today, I am pleased to announce the launch of our new delivery platform: Drug Channels Video!

You can look forward to:

• Information and analysis via our new YouTube channel (Never fear. I’ll still be publishing articles on the website every week.)

• Livestream video webinars (Stay tuned next week for an announcement about our first two events.)

• Private, live virtual keynotes and remote presentations (Email me to schedule a safe social distancing event for your team.)

• Online video courses (Coming later in 2020)

Please watch my brief video introduction below. (Click here if you can’t see the video.)


I hope you and your families stay safe and healthy in these challenging times. I look forward to reconnecting with you in person soon.

This May, join Dr. Adam J. Fein, CEO of Drug Channels Institute (DCI) and the author of Drug Channels, for two live video webinars:

• May 1: Industry Update and COVID-19 Impact: Retail & Specialty Pharmacies (REPLAY) (12:00 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. ET; $300 per site)

• May 8: Industry Update and COVID-19 Impact: PBMs & Payers (REPLAY) (12:00 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. ET; $300 per site)

• Register for replays both events (May 1 and May 8) ($500 per site for both events)

Dr. Fein will help you navigate this challenging time in U.S. drug channels. These 75-minute live events will be broadcast via Zoom from the new Drug Channels Video studio. See details below.


You can sign up for either one of these crucial educational opportunities for only $300 per site per event. We are offering special pricing of $500 if you sign up for both events.

An unlimited number of people may watch at one location. However, we recognize that it may be difficult to gather your team in one location, so we are offering significant discounts for multiple viewing sites. Please contact Paula Fein (paula@drugchannelsinstitute.com) to get special pricing information for 5 or more locations. If you purchase access for multiple sites, we will contact you for the name and email address of a contact person at each location.

Read on for more information about the events.

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To help people affected by COVID-19 and the caregivers who are supporting them , DCI will donate 20% of all profits from these events to The Center for Disaster Philanthropy’s COVID-19 Response Fund. This charity has earned a 4-star Charity Navigator rating and is a trusted philanthropic partner of Google, Coca Cola, UPS, Verizon, and many other organizations. The fund supports preparedness, containment, response, and recovery activities for those affected by the coronavirus and for the responders.

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WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

We will help you and your team better understand key industry dynamics and how COVID-19 may alter the industry.

Dr. Fein will share DCI’s latest market data and trends from The 2020 Economic Report on U.S. Pharmacies and Pharmacy Benefit Managers.

Topics for Industry Update and COVID-19 Impact: Retail & Specialty Pharmacies:

• The key trends for retail and specialty pharmacy markets
• The new normal for prescription demand
• How COVID-19 will change the U.S. payer mix
• Will the 340B program be disrupted?
• What’s next for specialty pharmacies
• The outlook for prescription profits
• The future for the drugstores’ front-end profits
• New opportunities for pharmacists as providers
• My reflections on life in a pandemic world and beyond

Topics for Industry Update and COVID-19 Impact: PBMs & Payers:

• The key trends for PBMs
• An update on the latest prescription data
• What the changing U.S. payer mix means for PBMs and insurers
• The outlook for benefit design
• PBMs' role in Managed Medicaid
• More on the 340B Drug Pricing Program
• Disruption to the buy-and-bill channel
• Promise and perils of vertical diversification
• Further reflections on life in a pandemic world

PLUS: Dr. Fein will take your questions during the event. CLICK HERE to submit questions to Dr. Fein in advance of the events.

IMPORTANT STUFF TO KNOW

• After you register, you will receive an email with the information you will need to access our live video webinar and add it to your calendar. We will also send you reminder emails one day and one hour before the event.

• Watch and listen via any device with a web browser (computer, iPad, iPhone/Android, etc.)

• We will use Zoom technology for this webinar. You will be able to watch the live video event with your browser or by downloading the Zoom client software/app.
  

• After each event, you’ll receive a downloadable PDF with the event slides.

• If your plans change and you can’t make it on May 1 or May 8, we will provide an opportunity to watch a replay of the live video events. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer refunds.

• Pembroke Consulting clients receive free access to the webinar. Contact Tamra Feldman (admin@drugchannels.net) for details. We will automatically refund payments from anyone at a Pembroke client who purchases access using their corporate email account.

Today’s guest post comes from Miranda Gill, Senior Director of Provider Network at CoverMyMeds.

Miranda reviews how the pandemic affects the ability of healthcare workers to complete administrative responsibilities like prior authorization. She then outlines how electronic automation is helping patients get needed medications while face-to-face interactions are restricted.

Learn more about healthcare IT solutions for providers and patients in CoverMyMeds’ 2020 Medication Access Report, or schedule a virtual meeting.
Read more »

This week, I’m rerunning some popular posts while I prepare for this Friday’s video webinar: Industry Update and COVID-19 Impact: PBMs & Payers.

Life was very different when I originally published today’s article. 2020 is not turning out to be quite what any of us expected. However, the pandemic has exposed some intriguing pros and cons of vertical consolidation. Click here to see the original post and comments from December 2019.

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The largest insurers, PBMs, and specialty pharmacies have now combined into vertically-integrated organizations. As I explain below, these companies have also been rapidly integrating with healthcare providers.

I also provide an updated look at these companies and highlight strategies that they are using—or could use—to control the channel. I believe that these insurer / PBM / specialty pharmacy / provider organizations are poised to restructure U.S. drug channels by exerting greater control over patient access, sites of care/dispensing, and pricing.

If they can effectively coordinate their sprawling business operations, they will pose a substantial threat of disruption to the existing commercial strategies of pharma companies.

Will they succeed by better managing care and costs, or merely by extracting higher profits from our convoluted system?
Read more »

This week, I’m rerunning some popular posts while I prepare for this Friday’s video webinar: Industry Update and COVID-19 Impact: PBMs & Payers.

I suspect this deal will remain profitable for the participating companies even as COVID-19 alters the US. prescription payer mix. Click here to see the original post and comments from January 2020. National market shares for the largest PBMs in 2019 appears as Exhibit 88 of our 2020 Economic Report on U.S. Pharmacies and Pharmacy Benefit Managers.

P.S. Sorry that today's meme is one day too late for Star Wars day.

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Just before the holidays, Cigna’s Express Scripts business announced a market-changing deal with Prime Therapeutics. Click here to read the press release.

There's been very little written about this transaction, though it has potentially major implications. Below, I share my thoughts on the following topics arising from the deal:

• Implications for manufacturers and pharmacies

• The role of the secretive Ascent Health Services

• What this all means for Walgreens

• Why the Federal Trade Commission won’t challenge the deal

A few weeks ago, I explained why integrated insurer / PBM / specialty pharmacy / provider organizations are poised to restructure U.S. drug channels. The Express Scripts / Prime deal signals that the channel will continue its amazing pace of reinvention.

The scale, scope, and interconnectedness of today’s market participants make the system increasingly resistant to massive disruption from either external players like Amazon or a government takeover. Like it or not, the channel will continue to gain power and extract profit. Read on and see if you agree.
Read more »

Blood tests that find malignancies before they spread could transform our approach to treatment

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An astrophysicist traces genealogy and art history to discover the origin of the famous motto

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Its sting is excruciating to people, but it is a bigger threat to honeybees vital for agriculture

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That emotion is natural in a situation like this, but there are ways to mitigate it

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The agency fell well short of its goal of evaluating local flood control efforts every five years

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I’m an astrophysicist, but that doesn’t mean I have a motivation to debunk them

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With cars off the roads, scientists can study how smog and other types of pollution change  

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Safeguarding public health requires rethinking our relationship to the environment and the inequities that drive its destruction

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Unified theory describes formation of huge, mysterious waves

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Originally published in February 1967

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WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Association of Clinical Research Organizations (ACRO) applauds Research!America for a recently released survey on the public’s perception of clinical trials....

WASHINGTON – November 14, 2017 – As the Senate begins debate on a tax reform bill, the clinical research industry hopes that...

On Monday, March 25, 2019 ACRO provided testimony at a public hearing held by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Treasury Department...

May 6, 2020 – (Washington, DC) – In an effort to fight the global COVID-19 pandemic, over 150 employees from clinical research...

Additional donations of chloroquine sent to governments in numerous other countries / Various clinical and preclinical studies investigate the efficacy and adverse effects in COVID-19 infections / Bayer plans considerable expansion of production capacities in the event that the efficacy of chloroquine is proven for COVID-19

Pharmaceutical giants will bury treatments in a thicket of patents, making them unaffordable to the world’s poorest

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

How will the Covid-19 pandemic end? According to conventional wisdom, the crisis may ease in a few months, when some of the antiviral medicines on trial succeed. In a few years’ time, when a vaccine becomes available, we may eradicate the virus altogether.

Yet it’s unlikely that this is how the pandemic will actually play out. Although there is every indication that treatments for coronavirus may soon emerge, the mere fact of their existence is no guarantee that people will be able to access them. In fact, Covid-19 is more likely to end in the same way that every pandemic ends: treatments and vaccines will be buried in a thicket of patents – and pharmaceutical companies will ultimately make the decisions about who lives and who dies.

Related: The race to find a coronavirus treatment has one major obstacle: big pharma | Ara Darzi

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Government bodies, industry and charities to collaborate in research efforts

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage
• Coronavirus vaccine – when will we have one?

The government has announced a new vaccines taskforce to help the development of a vaccine for Covid-19 and ensure its rapid production and rollout if one arrives.

The business secretary, Alok Sharma, also gave details of cash grants for work into both vaccines and potential treatments. Among the projects receiving cash is one led by Public Health England (PHE), which hopes to develop an antibody drug, something that has the potential to work as both a prophylactic and a treatment for those infected.

Related: The hunt for a coronavirus vaccine

Hydroxychloroquine, also known by its brand name, Plaquenil, is a drug used to treat malaria. It is a less toxic version of chloroquine, another malaria drug, which itself is related to quinine, an ingredient in tonic water.

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Video meeting seen as global endorsement of WHO and sign of Trump’s isolation on world stage

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

Global leaders have pledged to accelerate cooperation on a coronavirus vaccine and to share research, treatment and medicines across the globe. But the United States did not take part in the World Health Organization initiative, in a sign of Donald Trump’s increasing isolation on the global stage.

The cooperation pledge, made at a virtual meeting, was designed to show that wealthy countries will not keep the results of research from developing countries.

Related: The hunt for a coronavirus vaccine – a perilous and uncertain path

Related: ‘Please don’t inject bleach’: Trump’s wild coronavirus claims prompt disbelief

Provide access to new treatments, technologies and vaccines across the world.

Commit to an unprecedented level of international partnership on research and coordinate efforts to tackle the pandemic and reduce infections.

Reach collective decisions on responding to the pandemic, recognising that the virus’s spread in one country can affect all countries.

Learn from experience and adapt the global response.

Be accountable, to the most vulnerable communities and the whole world.

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Big drugs companies have long favoured outsourcing clinical trials to poor countries with lax regulations to cut costs and maximise profit

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• See all our coronavirus coverage

Last week, in Oxford, the first volunteers in the first European human trial were injected with a potential coronavirus vaccine. At the same time, Pakistan’s National Institute of Health received an offer from the Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinopharm International Corp to take part in a trial of another potential coronavirus vaccine.

Related: Africa's Covid-19 research must be tailored to its realities – by its own scientists | Monique Wasunna

In India, many poor people were recruited to HIV trials without knowing that they were taking part in experiments

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Preliminary results of US government trial show patients who received drug recovered faster than others

Hopes of an effective drug treatment for coronavirus patients have risen following positive early results from a trial of remdesivir, a drug first tried in Ebola patients.

Data from the trial on more than 1,000 severely ill patients in 75 hospitals around the world show that patients put on the drug recovered 31% faster than similar patients who were given a placebo drug instead. Remdesivir cut recovery time from a median of 15 days to 11.

Related: World's stock markets soar on coronavirus treatment hopes

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With substandard medicines already in wide circulation, fears are growing that coronavirus could create a lethal ‘parallel crisis’

When Joana Opoku-Darko’s daughter Anna was 18 months old, she came down with malaria, a disease common in Ghana and especially deadly for children.

She bought medication from a pharmacy in Ghana’s capital, Accra; when Anna’s fever didn’t subside she took her to a hospital, where they ran some tests.

The current focus on curbing Covid-19 spread means there is less focus on routine market surveillance

Related: Fight the fakes: how to beat the $200bn medicine counterfeiters | Helen Lock

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Exclusive: St Vincent’s in Sydney is the only confirmed location so far, as NSW Health negotiates with US pharmaceutical giant Gilead

• Remdesivir: the antiviral drug is being touted as a possible coronavirus treatment – but will it work?
• Sign up for Guardian Australia’s daily coronavirus email
• Download the free Guardian app to get the most important news notifications

The US pharmaceutical company Gilead is finalising the location of five hospitals in Australia to receive the highly sought-after experimental coronavirus drug remdesivir.

The only confirmed location is St Vincent’s hospital in Sydney, a major tertiary hospital and the centre of many of the New South Wales outbreak areas. A NSW Health spokeswoman confirmed the health department “has been engaging with Gilead on gaining access to the drug for Covid-19 patients”.

Related: Remdesivir: the antiviral drug is being touted as a possible coronavirus treatment – but will it work?

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Gilead’s remdesivir, which has been hailed as one of the few truly promising treatments for COVID-19 at this early stage of the ongoing pandemic, has failed in its first randomised clinical trial, leaked data has revealed.

English excess deaths from the coronavirus are comparable to the worst hit countries in Europe, according to a Sky News analysis.

The first findings of two new studies have been revealed detailing the efficacy of Gilead’s antiviral therapy remdesivir in the treatment of patients hospitalised with COVID-19.

A “landmark” partnership has been struck between AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford in the ongoing battle against COVID-19, with the former agreeing to aid in the development and large-scale manufacture of the latter’s potential recombinant adenovirus vaccine for the prevention of novel coronavirus infection.

A US federal judge has ruled that generic versions of the cancer treatment Bendeka infringe on four separate patents, and has delayed them from launching until 2031.

The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use has given its recommendation for the approval of Kalydeco for the treatment of children and adolescents with cystic fibrosis in a new indication, Vertex has revealed.

The coronavirus pandemic is likely to last as long as two years and will not be properly controlled until two-thirds of the world’s populations have become immune.

Bristol Myers Squibb and Acceleron Pharma’s Reblozyl (luspatercept) has secured a positivr opinion from the European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) for use in the treatment of transfusion-dependent anaemia in two adult patient populations.

The NHS has set out plans to step up its non-COVID-19 services over the next six weeks.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that there is evidence the COVID-19 coronavirus was created in a lab, despite US intelligence officials stating it probably occurred naturally.

Gilead’s antiviral therapy remdesivir has shown tentatively promising efficacy in the race to find an effective treatment for COVID-19, one of the only therapies to do so at this early stage of the pandemic. Now, the FDA has invoked its Emergency Use Authorization powers to approve the drug for the treatment of patients hospitalised with the novel coronavirus.

Lonza Group AG and Moderna Inc have entered a deal to develop 1 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines a year.

A French patient who suffered from pneumonia in December actually had COVID-19, it has been revealed.

Alexion has announced it is to acquire Boston-based blood disorder specialist Portola Pharmaceuticals in a transaction to the value of $1.41 billion in cash.

South Korea says that remdesivir, traditionally used in treating Ebola, may not be effective enough in treating COVID-19 patients.

Two studies from the UK and US have identified hundreds of mutations in COVID-19, which could cause problems for the development of a vaccine.

Britain has become the first European nation to pass 30,000 deaths from the coronavirus, putting it only behind the US as the worst hit country in the world in terms of fatalities.

New crop of data suggests drug can speed recovery from COVID-19

Move comes after drug showed preliminary efficacy in clinical trial in late April

Experts says $20bn needed to vaccinate global population

Results could unlock another big market for the company’s star drug

Click to view a price quote on AGN.