InnovationRx is your weekly digest of healthcare news. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.
Across the United States, health officials are warning about the seasonal return of the West Nile virus, which causes a potentially lethal disease that has no treatments or vaccines. These warnings are coming earlier this year, as changing climate conditions are making environments around the country more hospitable to the mosquitoes that carry the disease.
According to the CDC, between 1,000 and 10,000 people are infected every year in the United States. And while around 80% of people infected don’t get any symptoms, the 20% who do tend to experience severe ones. West Nile disease includes a fever, alongside headaches, pain, nausea, rashes, vomiting and more. The fatigue caused by the infection can last weeks or months, and a small percentage will develop impacts to their central nervous system, which increases the risk of death.
There’s no vaccine on the immediate horizon for West Nile disease, and while a variety of drugs have been tested against it, none have shown any real efficacy. Which means right now the best way to avoid the disease is to avoid mosquito bites.
Read more about the disease here.
Billionaire Groupon Founder Eric Lefkofsky’s Health Tech Company Goes Public—His Fourth IPO
Five years ago, Chicago-based billionaire and serial entrepreneur Eric Lefkofsky told Forbes he hoped health analytics and precision medicine company Tempus AI would be his “legacy project.” It’s currently his most valuable asset—and his fourth company to go public.
Lefkofsky founded Tempus in 2015, after his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer and he was “just perplexed at how little data had permeated her care.” Tempus started as an oncology-focused company—sequencing, for example, cancer patients’ tumor samples and analyzing them with machine-learning-trained models to help determine a more accurate diagnosis and personalized treatment—and has gradually expanded to other disease areas: neuropsychiatry, radiology and cardiology.
The company, which started trading on the Nasdaq on Friday, now has 2,300 employees and its customers include more than 2,000 healthcare providers who send their patients’ samples for testing and 19 of the 20 largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, which license Tempus’ massive troves of data for use in drug discovery.
Read more here.
Pipeline & Deal Updates
Vaccine: The FDA has approved Merck’s vaccine Capvaxive, which is used to protect against the bacteria that causes pneumonia, bacteremia and meningitis.
Company Launch: Marea Therapeutics, a biotech company developing treatments for cardiometabolic diseases, announced its launch today with combined A and B rounds totalling $190 million.
AI Drug Discovery: Enveda Biosciences, which uses a machine learning platform to identify promising drug candidates in nature, announced it has raised a $55 million financing round.
Leukemia: Takeda announced it has signed an option agreement with Ascentage Pharma for an exclusive license for its drug candidate olverembatinib, which is aimed at treating chronic myeloid leukemia and other blood cancers. Ascentage will receive a $100 million upfront payment and other payments and royalties will be due if Takeda exercises the option.
MIT Spinout The Engine Ventures Raises New $398 Million Fund To Tackle Tech’s Toughest Problems
The Engine Ventures has raised its third fund, which closed at a total of $398 million–nearly double that of its second fund. The venture firm, which spun out of MIT, invests in a number of advanced technological areas–including human health. One of its portfolio companies, Vaxess, for example, is working on patches that deliver vaccines and biologics in a way that reduces the need for cold chains and syringes. This makes these treatments more accessible in parts of the world that lack a large healthcare infrastructure.
Read more here.
Other Healthcare News
The arrests of two executives of telehealth medication company Done may have the unintended consequence of worsening an almost two-year ADHD medication shortage and disrupt the care of upwards of 50,000 patients across the country.
The Department of Defense surreptitiously operated an anti-vaccine campaign aimed at Chinese vaccination efforts in the Philippines during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a bombshell Reuters investigation published Friday morning.
Abortion drug mifepristone will not have its government approvals rolled back, as the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the government Thursday in a case that sought to further restrict medication abortion.
Amazon Pharmacy RxPass, which offers “unlimited access to 60 eligible prescriptions medications for just $5 a month, plus fast, free delivery,” is now available to Prime members who have Medicare coverage.
Several states are expanding pharmacists’ scope of practice to allow them to prescribe medications as they face a shortage of primary care physicians and other healthcare workers.
Across Forbes
A Robotaxi Business Is A Dream For Elon Musk–But Already A Reality For Waymo
Is Your Money Really Safe In An ‘FDIC-Insured’ Fintech Account?
Honor Thy Father: The Saga Of A Drug Smuggler’s Son
What Else We are Reading
I’m a hypochondriac. Here’s how the health care system needs to deal with people like me (Stat)
When Therapists Lose Their Licenses, Some Turn to the Unregulated Life Coaching Industry Instead (ProPublica)
Ascension Catholic hospitals outsource staffing to private-equity-owned partners (Religion News)
