InnovationRx is your weekly digest of healthcare news. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.
Last week, the 2024 Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award was granted to married duo Quarraisha Abdool Karim and Salim S. Abdool Karim.The South African-born researchers began their work while both were at Columbia University in New York during the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. That disease wasn’t the focus of their research at the time, but that changed quickly. “HIV absolutely dominated New York in 1988,” Salim told Forbes. And the two realized that the disease wasn’t going to stay there. “When we got back to South Africa, we committed ourselves to work on HIV,” he continued.
Back home, their research led them to realize that preventing the spread of HIV meant empowering women to protect themselves. So they began their research into a wide variety of different types of prophylactic treatments that might help. They spent the next 18 years “failing repeatedly,” Salim said, while also through the years working on advocacy and education about HIV/AIDS to bring help to those who needed it and to find other ways to prevent its spread.
In the early 2000’s, the pair turned their attention to tenofovir, a drug originally directed at herpes which was approved in 2001 by the FDA for treating HIV. The couple wanted to see if it might also be used to help prevent infection in the first place. After a years-long study, the couple presented the results that the drug could lower the risk of infection for women at an AIDS research conference in 2010. They received a standing ovation at the presentation of their results, and this work became the foundation for current HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (aka PReP), which has helped slow down the spread of HIV/AIDS throughout the world.
The Lasker Awards are sometimes called “America’s Nobel Prize” – recognizing some of the most important advancements in medical science. Which makes receiving it “humbling at one level, but also inspiring,” Quaraissha said. “Because what we’re being recognized for is a combination of science, contribution to policy and service to humanity at different levels. I think it really gave more meaning to what we’ve contributed to date.”
Also, a quick note that InnovationRx co-author Alex Knapp has a new newsletter, The Prototype, which delivers the latest in science and emerging technologies to your inbox every Friday morning. Sign up now!
Iranian Immigrant Becomes Billionaire As Her Biotech Firm’s Stock Soars
In the ultra-competitive world of cancer medicines, Summit Therapeutics is a relative minnow. The 21-year-old biotech company has just 130 employees, no revenue and no approved drugs. But in the past two weeks, its market capitalization has exploded following positive news about its most promising drug candidate.
Shares of Nasdaq-listed Summit Therapeutics nearly doubled since September 6, lifting the company’s market capitalization to nearly $17 billion. That has in turn made its co-CEO, Maky Zanganeh, with a stake just under 5% plus a slew of options, a new billionaire—worth an estimated $1.1 billion. She’s one of just 34 self-made U.S. women billionaires, and one of three American women to have made a billion-dollar fortune in the healthcare sector. The other two: Bio-Rad Laboratories cofounder Alice Schwartz and United Therapeutics founder Martine Rothblatt.
Read more here.
Pipeline & Deal Updates
Neuroscience: The FDA has approved arimoclomol, marketed by Zevra Therapeutics as Miplyffa, for treating Niemann-Pick disease type C (NPC) in combination with miglustat. NPC is a neurodegenerative disease and arimoclomol is the first approved treatment for it.
Genomics: Synthetic genomics company Constructive Bio announced it raised a $58 million series A round.
Generative AI: Novartis announced a research collaboration with Generate:Biomedicines to leverage the latter’s generative AI for drug discovery platform to discover new treatments for multiple diseases. Generate:Biomedicines will receive $65 million upfront for the agreement, which is worth up to $1 billion in milestone payments plus royalties from any approved drugs.
Radiopharma: Radiopharmaceutical company Telix announced that it’s acquiring U.S-based RLS in a deal worth up to $250 million, pending regulatory and shareholder approval, which will give it access to the latter’s network of 31 radiopharmacies in 18 states. This will be Telix’s third acquisition of 2024.
Medical Tech: MedTech startup Route 92 Medical announced it’s raising $50 million in a series F extension.
Cell Therapy: GC Therapeutics, founded by a group of researchers in George Church’s lab at Harvard, announced its launch along with a $65 million series A that brings its total capital raised to $75 million. The startup will be focused on developing a new generation of cell therapies.
Inside Facebook’s Scammy Abortion Access Network
A Forbes review of Facebook found nearly 800 groups and pages across 76 countries offering to connect women to abortion remedies — at least 300 of which operate in countries where abortion is at least sometimes illegal, or even a criminal offense. All told, the groups have nearly 1.8 million members. Forbes found that Facebook groups and pages selling abortion drugs were present in nearly every major region around the world, including abortion-restrictive population centers.
Seventeen groups and pages claimed to provide abortion pills to women in the United States, though it is unclear how many of them actually make the pills available. The largest, which has more than 117,000 members, directed users to an abortion-related URL that subsequently redirected to an adult website. The Facebook groups are something of a double edged sword: while they may get some women help, they can be a gateway to scams and fraudsters into the picture, and carry health and privacy risks for people in restrictive countries.
Read more here
Other Healthcare News
New York’s First Human Case Of Mosquito-Borne EEE This Year Ends In Patient Death—What To Know
FTC Sues Pharmacy Middlemen For Allegedly Inflating Insulin Prices
Ozempic May Decrease Opioid Overdose Risk, Study Suggests: What To Know
Insurers Expand Coverage Of Prescriptions Written By Pharmacists
Across Forbes
What Else We are Reading
Masimo Has a New Boss (Bloomberg)
Why do obesity drugs seem to treat so many other ailments? (Nature)
Can Anne Wojcicki save 23andMe? (Stat)
