New re­search found that self-re­port­ed con­flicts of in­ter­est among fed­er­al vac­cine ad­vi­so­ry mem­bers were at their low­est lev­el in 25 years through 2024, coun­ter­ing an ar­gu­ment of po­lit­i­cal­ly-ap­point­ed health of­fi­cials who have sought to over­haul the com­mit­tees.

Re­searchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia found that the av­er­age an­nu­al preva­lence of con­flicts of in­ter­est re­port­ed by mem­bers of the CDC’s Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Im­mu­niza­tion Prac­tices de­clined from 42.8% in 2000 to 5.0% in 2024. For mem­bers of the FDA’s Vac­cines and Re­lat­ed Bi­o­log­i­cal Prod­ucts Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee, the av­er­age an­nu­al preva­lence dropped from 11.1% in 2000 to less than 4.0% since 2010.

The au­thors of the re­search let­ter that pub­lished Mon­day in JA­MA con­clud­ed that “re­port­ed COI preva­lence rates have de­clined for ACIP and VRB­PAC over the last 25 years and were at his­tor­i­cal­ly low lev­els through 2024.” They used pub­licly avail­able re­ports from ACIP mem­bers that were up­loaded ear­li­er this year and study waivers sub­mit­ted by VRB­PAC mem­bers.

Van­da Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ jet lag treat­ment ap­pears to be head­ed back to the FDA fol­low­ing what the com­pa­ny is call­ing a “land­mark vic­to­ry” in a fed­er­al ap­peals court.

The US Court of Ap­peals for the DC Cir­cuit on Fri­day grant­ed Van­da’s pe­ti­tion for re­view in part, de­ter­min­ing that the agency’s de­ci­sion in 2024 to de­ny the com­pa­ny a hear­ing over its bid for a new in­di­ca­tion for its sleep dis­or­der drug Het­lioz was “ar­bi­trary and capri­cious.” The court re­mand­ed the case back to the FDA “for fu­ture pro­ceed­ings.”

Van­da has been in a years­long con­flict with the FDA over its ap­pli­ca­tion to mar­ket Het­lioz for jet lag dis­or­der. The drug was first ap­proved in 2014 to treat a chron­ic cir­ca­di­an rhythm dis­or­der called non-24-hour sleep-wake dis­or­der, and lat­er won a la­bel ex­pan­sion to treat night­time sleep dis­tur­bances in pa­tients with a rare neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal dis­or­der called Smith-Ma­ge­nis syn­drome.

The White House’s MA­HA Com­mis­sion re­port in­cludes a broad vac­cine frame­work that will ad­dress the child­hood vac­ci­na­tion sched­ule and in­juries, ac­cord­ing to a draft ver­sion cit­ed by oth­er me­dia out­lets last week.

The draft, first pub­lished in full by Politi­co, pro­pos­es a frame­work de­vel­oped be­tween HHS and the White House­'s Do­mes­tic Pol­i­cy Coun­cil. Un­der HHS Sec­re­tary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., fed­er­al health agen­cies have al­ready start­ed to over­haul the gov­ern­ment’s vac­cine in­fra­struc­ture to fit the fo­cus of the pro­posed frame­work.

The draft re­port says that the vac­cine frame­work will fo­cus on the child­hood vac­cine sched­ule, in­juries, mod­ern­iz­ing vac­cines with “trans­par­ent, gold stan­dard sci­ence,” and re­mov­ing per­ceived con­flicts of in­ter­est. So far, pro­pos­als by Kennedy and oth­er top health of­fi­cials have sought to ad­dress all those pil­lars.

GoodRx users will now be able to get all strengths of Ozem­pic and We­govy in­jec­tions at a cash price of $499 per month, thanks to a new col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the pre­scrip­tion drug dis­count com­pa­ny and phar­ma gi­ant No­vo Nordisk.

The part­ner­ship marks an­oth­er av­enue for pa­tients pay­ing with­out in­sur­ance to ac­cess the pop­u­lar GLP-1 med­i­cines, and it re­flects GoodRx’s re­cent push in­to work­ing with brand-name drug­mak­ers. It’s al­so the first time Ozem­pic, used to treat type 2 di­a­betes, is be­ing of­fered at the low­er cash price. No­vo said pa­tients can al­so ac­cess the Ozem­pic dis­count through its di­rect-to-con­sumer plat­form Novo­Care. The list price of the weight loss drug We­govy is $1,349, while Ozem­pic’s is $998.

Af­ter se­cur­ing an ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval, No­vo Nordisk’s We­govy is the sec­ond drug to re­ceive a green light in the US to treat fat­ty liv­er dis­ease, or MASH.

The block­buster drug will join Madri­gal Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ Rezd­if­fra on the mar­ket for the con­di­tion, and the ques­tion is how big a slice of the mar­ket No­vo’s drug can take, giv­en Rezd­if­fra’s first-mover ad­van­tage.

No­vo’s shares climbed 6% on the Copen­hagen ex­change on Mon­day morn­ing. Madri­gal’s MDGL were down 4% pre&s