Matthew Herper

1 week ago | statnews.com | Matthew Herper

Capping more than two years of stock-gyrating drama, Pfizer said Monday that it would stop development of danuglipron, its experimental oral GLP-1 medicine to treat obesity, focusing its efforts on another medicine with a different mechanism of action. Pfizer said in a press release that an asymptomatic volunteer in the company’s studies experienced “potential drug-induced liver injury,” which resolved after stopping the medication.

1 week ago | statnews.com | Lizzy Lawrence |Matthew Herper

WASHINGTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. covered a lot of ground in a speech to Food and Drug Administration employees on Friday morning, as he attempted to rally them to his Make America Healthy Again agenda. He jumped between an anecdote about watching peregrine falcons fly down Pennsylvania Avenue as a kid to asserting that regulatory agencies have become captured by the industries they’re charged with overseeing.

2 weeks ago | statnews.com | Lizzy Lawrence |Elaine Chen |Matthew Herper

WASHINGTON — The workers who review drugs and devices and inspect manufacturing plans were protected when the Trump administration fired thousands of Food and Drug Administration employees. The idea was to preserve some of the FDA’s most important functions. But drug reviews are likely to be affected, anyway, more than a dozen current and recently departed FDA employees told STAT. The people requested anonymity to protect against retaliation from the administration.

3 weeks ago | statnews.com | Matthew Herper

The forced resignation of Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration official in charge of regulating vaccines, gene therapies, and the blood supply, led to panic over the weekend in the worlds of public health and biopharmaceuticals — two worlds that often agree on very little aside from their belief in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. There were also some dissenters: those who argued one person is simply not important enough to raise concerns this big.

3 weeks ago | statnews.com | Matthew Herper |Helen Branswell |Usha Lee McFarling |Lizzy Lawrence |Jason Mast

Peter Marks, the top Food and Drug Administration official who oversaw vaccines, gene therapies, and the blood supply, resigned Friday after being told by Trump administration officials he would be fired if he did not step down, according to press reports and people familiar with the situation. In his resignation letter, which was obtained by STAT, Marks said that he had attempted to answer the concerns of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.