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Wednesday’s Senate hearing on high costs for insulin “is not the end” of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ plans for drug pricing interrogations, he told STAT in an interview. But it will be a show. The Vermont independent is bringing executives from drugmakers Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi, along with pharmacy benefit managers Express Scripts, OptumRx and CVS Health, to appear before the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee this week. (Owermohle, 5/9)

EQRx, a company that aimed to lower drug prices by introducing inexpensive me-too medicines, said Tuesday that it has abandoned that plan and is laying off nearly 60% of its workforce. (Herper, 5/8)

Japanese drug maker Takeda has notified Massachusetts officials that it plans to eliminate as many as 180 jobs in the state. In a required notice filed under the state Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act, the biopharma giant said it will reduce its payroll by 138 jobs at four Takeda Development Centers America sites in Cambridge, starting in early July and continuing through March 2024. (Weisman, 5/8)

Digital health tools are developing faster than the Food and Drug Administration is able to regulate them, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf acknowledged this week. “I think we’re behind, and it’s going to be really hard to catch up,” Califf said in a speech Monday at the National Health Council’s patient engagement symposium. (Lawrence, 5/9)

On Friday, a committee of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration will meet to discuss Sarepta Therapeutics’ closely watched experimental gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. It will be the first FDA advisory panel hearing for a Duchenne drug from Sarepta since 2016, when hundreds of patients and family members traveled to the FDA campus in Maryland to plead with experts to authorize an earlier therapy from the company despite limited evidence. (Mast, 5/9)

Plummeting costs of DNA sequencing technologies are injecting urgency into the longstanding debate over whether to dive deeper into the genomes of more infants — even apparently healthy ones. (Molteni, 5/8)

Amid rising demand for drugs like Wegovy, Ozempic, and Mounjaro that can lead to significant weight loss, some obesity experts are concerned about the drugs’ costs — both to patients’ finances and to their health. (Castillo, 5/8)

Tardigrades are microscopic eight-legged animals often referred to as “water bears.” The tiny animals are known for their extreme survival skills. University of Wyoming researcher Thomas Boothby said tardigrades can survive several environmental conditions that are usually incompatible with life. (Montana, 5/8)