Cy­to­ki­net­ics ex­ec­u­tives said their first FDA-ap­proved drug is off to a strong start as it goes up against a Bris­tol My­ers Squibb ri­val in a type of heart dis­ease.

Myqor­zo launched in Jan­u­ary and will com­pete with Bris­tol My­ers’ Camzyos, which had about a four-year head start for the treat­ment of ob­struc­tive hy­per­trophic car­diomy­opa­thy. Cy­to­ki­net­ics com­mer­cial chief An­drew Cal­los told End­points News on Wednes­day that car­di­ol­o­gists are “ex­cit­ed about an­oth­er treat­ment op­tion.”

“We get a very high per­cent­age that say they plan on pre­scrib­ing Myqor­zo,” he said, cit­ing physi­cian sur­veys.

Ob­struc­tive hy­per­trophic car­diomy­opa­thy is a con­di­tion in which the heart strug­gles to pump blood. Ex­ec­u­tives on Cy­to­ki­net­ics’ fourth-quar­ter earn­ings call on Tues­day said that pa­tients start­ed treat­ment on Myqor­zo the first week it be­came avail­able. De­mand and the lev­el of en­gage­ment from health­care prac­ti­tion­ers is “at, if not above, what we ex­pect­ed in­ter­nal­ly,” Cal­los said on the in­vestor call.

Gilead and Mer­ck to­geth­er are de­vel­op­ing what could be the first week­ly HIV pill, but they are al­so each mak­ing an in­di­vid­ual push for new dai­ly drugs.

The two com­pa­nies sep­a­rate­ly re­port­ed find­ings Wednes­day from late-stage clin­i­cal tri­als on two new once-dai­ly pills, and plan to head to reg­u­la­tors with the da­ta.

Sin­gle-tablet treat­ments like Bik­tarvy, Gilead’s top-sell­ing drug, are al­ready avail­able, but some pa­tients can­not take them for var­i­ous rea­sons.

So Gilead is de­vel­op­ing a one-pill ther­a­py with lenaca­pavir, a mol­e­cule that’s ex­pect­ed to be a key part of the com­pa­ny’s fu­ture HIV busi­ness, though much of that fo­cus has been on lenaca­pavir’s po­ten­tial as a part of long-act­ing reg­i­mens and not the dai­ly treat­ment.

HHS Sec­re­tary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faces a sec­ond le­gal chal­lenge re­lat­ed to the over­haul of the child­hood vac­cine sched­ule.

Fif­teen states claimed that HHS’ de­ci­sion to down­grade rec­om­men­da­tions for six vac­cines is the “cul­mi­na­tion of a se­ries of un­law­ful ac­tions in fur­ther­ance of Sec­re­tary Kennedy’s idio­syn­crat­ic and un­sci­en­tif­ic hos­til­i­ty to vac­cines,” ac­cord­ing to a law­suit filed Tues­day.

The com­plaint, brought in a fed­er­al court in Cal­i­for­nia, fol­lows a sim­i­lar law­suit filed in Mass­a­chu­setts by lead­ing clin­i­cian groups. That court is ex­pect­ed any day to de­cide whether to pre­lim­i­nar­i­ly block the vac­cine changes.

“This is a pub­lic­i­ty stunt dressed up as a law­suit,” an HHS spokesper­son said in an emailed state­ment. “By law, the health sec­re­tary has clear au­thor­i­ty to make de­ter­mi­na­tions on the CDC im­mu­niza­tion sched­ule.”

GSK said on Wednes­day that it is buy­ing 35Phar­ma for $950 mil­lion, pick­ing up the Cana­di­an biotech's pul­monary hy­per­ten­sion drug pro­gram — and po­ten­tial­ly dip­ping its toes in­to in­ves­ti­gat­ing weight loss drugs that avoid mus­cle loss.

At the heart of the deal is a drug called HS235, which has com­plet­ed stud­ies in healthy sub­jects and is about to en­ter clin­i­cal tri­als. The up­com­ing tri­als will fo­cus on pul­monary ar­te­r­i­al hy­per­ten­sion (PAH) and pul­monary hy­per­ten­sion due to heart fail­ure with pre­served ejec­tion frac­tion (PH-HF­pEF).

On its web­site, 35Phar­ma de­scribes HS235 as a mul­ti­spe­cif­ic “de­coy trap” for ac­tivin and growth dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion fac­tors, which can con­tribute to PH. In this way, it ze­roes in on what’s called the ac­tivin re­cep­tor sig­nal­ing path­way, and its “en­hanced se­lec­tiv­i­ty” could re­duce bleed­ing and bro­ken blood ves­sels as side ef­fects. These are some­times seen with cur­rent PH ther­a­pies, GSK said.