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Pharmacy benefit managers would be required to report more information on their deals with pharmaceutical companies under legislation unanimously approved by a House panel on Wednesday. The House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced the Promoting Access to Treatments and Increasing Extremely Needed Transparency (PATIENT) Act of 2023, sponsored by Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), on a 49-0 vote. The panel's health subcommittee cleared the same measure last week. (Nzanga, 5/24)

The Food and Drug Administration is delaying by one month a decision on the approval of a gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the treatment’s maker, Sarepta Therapeutics, said Wednesday. Sarepta said the FDA expects to complete the review of its gene therapy called SRP-9001 by June 22. A decision had been expected on or before May 29. (Feuerstein and Mast, 5/24)

Noom Inc., a startup that for years has touted a psychological path to weight loss, is now ready to add drugs to the equation. After a pilot last year, the company is launching its Noom Med option that will include prescriptions for obesity drugs like Novo Nordisk A/S’s Wegovy for about $120 a month. It’s the latest weight-loss company to join the lifestyle-focused industry’s push into using highly effective, costly GLP-1 obesity drugs to help customers slim down. (Court, 5/24)

The promise of immunotherapies to treat cancer has yet to reach brain tumors. It’s difficult to deliver medicines into the brain for a host of reasons. In particular, brain tumors are able to suppress the body’s immune activity and have comparably few genetic vulnerabilities that cancer drugs can target. They’re considered immunologically “cold.” That hasn’t stopped researchers from trying various ways to enlist the body’s own immune system to stamp out brain tumors. (Joseph, 5/24)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: This Panel Will Decide Whose Medicine To Make Affordable. Its Choice Will Be Tricky

Catherine Reitzel’s multiple sclerosis medication costs nearly $100,000 a year. Kris Garcia relies on a drug for a blood-clotting disorder that runs $10,000 for a three-day supply. And Mariana Marquez-Farmer would likely die within days without her monthly $300 vial of insulin. At best, a Colorado panel of medical and pharmacy experts seeking to cut the costs of expensive drugs will be able to help only one of them. (Hawryluk, 5/25)

U.S. authorities have seized increasing quantities of illegal ketamine, according to new research, a trend that coincides with the psychedelic drug’s rising popularity as a treatment for mental health ailments. The number of ketamine seizures by federal, state and local law enforcement in the United States increased from 55 in 2017 to 247 in 2022, while the total weight increased by more than 1,000 percent over that time, according to a letter published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry. Most of the ketamine was in powder form, which could raise the risk of being adulterated with deadly drugs such as fentanyl. (Gilbert, 5/24)

When seriously depressed patients don’t respond to antidepressants, the alternatives are limited. Now a new study has found that ketamine performs at least as well as the current gold standard for such patients, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), suggesting it deserves consideration as a frontline response for people with treatment-resistant depression. (Goldhill, 5/24)